By David Cruz
Correspondent
Out of control fire, fueled by wood construction and aided by wind, ripping through a relatively new apartment development in Edgewater earlier this year. Luckily no one died, but 500 apartment units were destroyed and scores of firefighters were put in harm’s way. That’s a worst case scenario. But today firefighters from around New Jersey gathered at the State House to call on the governor to sign a bill that would mandate all new one- and two-family dwellings to have sprinkler systems. The bill — the New Home Fire Safety Act — passed both chambers and awaits the governor’s signature.
“We had 50 other people who were gonna come fill these chairs and two other firefighters would have been here to fill these chairs today. Unfortunately, that’s the number of lives that we lost in home fires in 2013, the last year that we have official data for,” said David Kurasz, vice chair of the New Jersey Fire Sprinkler Coalition.
Fatalities more frequently occur in smaller scale fires that pose an even greater danger to firefighters because they’re less likely to have any fire suppression at all. It’s a situation the state’s firefighters union says the governor could remedy with a stroke of a pen.
“It has become too common practice for our governor to keep New Jersey residents and the firefighters that are sworn to protect those residents in his rear view mirror,” said New Jersey Firefighters’ Mutual Benevolent Association President Edwin Donnelly.
Using the start of the GWB scandal as a time stamp, supporters of the bill criticized the governor for authorizing millions of taxpayer dollars on an internal review — they say to clear his name — while ignoring the 116 home fire-related deaths they say could’ve been prevented if the law had been in effect. The numbers, says the bill’s sponsor, are unignorable.
“The average cost of damage in a home with fire sprinklers was $14,000, but compare that to damage in a home without: $180,000. The water used to fight a fire in homes with sprinklers averages 340 gallons. In a home without, nearly 6,000 gallons,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, sponsor of the New Home Fire Safety Act.
The governor’s office says they don’t comment on pending legislation but one Republican lawmaker chuckled at the irony of Wisniewski — whose GWB committee has also spent millions of taxpayer dollars looking into the scandal — criticizing the governor. But with the budget process grinding along deliberately and the governor focused on other things, this bill seems likely headed — again — to the back burner.