Those who believe in a particular religion often journey to a holy place considered the ground zero of their religion. Christians go to the Holy Land. Islam believers go to Mecca. A variety of other religions have locations to which their faithful journey.

The pilgrimage is long and arduous. It often involves sacrifices and commitment. Those same defining terms can be applied to seeing built-in fire protection technology as an integral part of fire protection in the United States. It has been a journey.

If you are a fire marshal or a chief officer involved in developing public policy, you may not see the extent of that journey. Most people examine events in the context of their own life spans. However, there are those with vision and insight who project their beliefs into the future.

Something we fail to do from time to time is to look backward. While the past may seem irrelevant to today, it was once the future and the present. Perhaps it is time to remember how far we have come since this technology has been available.

Why was built-in fire protection invented anyway? In fact, I don't think that it was really invented as much as it evolved. The early writings of those involved in fire protection show some rather bizarre ideas that were being applied to solve specific fire problems.

One of the most imaginative ones was a scheme of putting large barrels of water on the beams in warehouses and having explosives sit atop the bucket with fuses dangling off the sides. The theory went that when the fire got hot enough it would ignite the fuses, the fuses would set off the explosives, and the buckets would blow apart discharging water on the fire. That evolved into the idea of having perforated pipes throughout a building. A single valve had to be turned on manually to provide water supply. The obvious disadvantage was that no matter where the fire was, everything got soaked. One might consider it to be the first deluge system.

The real innovation was the design of the sprinkler head. Its most significant impact was that it set the stage for the technological solution that had a wide variety of design features.

Understandably, automatic fire protection was first used by businesses. Robber barons notwithstanding, the industrial leaders of the 1800s wanted to protect their investments. There was no reason to worry about putting sprinkler systems in the modest workshop and factories prior to the industrial age because they were not concentrated in large areas for the most part. The first thing that the sprinkler concept focused on was business continuity. If you owned a mill, you could not afford to be out of business for two years while your mill was being rebuilt.

Sprinkler technology's acceptance into the world of fire protection came with the creation of the National Fire Protection Association and the first standard for the installation of these systems. I never reviewed NFPA 1, which was published in the late 1870s, but am reasonably sure that it's creation was a function of a consensus of the few individuals who understood sprinkler technology at the time. Here is a coincidence: this was about the same time that this country's fire service was converting from a volunteer force to a full-time profession.

Many of the pioneers of the American fire service were not only sprinkler advocates, but were involved intimately in creating the concept. It was common that those who migrated to the top of many of the metropolitan fire departments had engineering backgrounds. One needs to look no further than the first meeting in 1873 hosted at the Baltimore Fire Department when the group chose to call itself the National Association of Fire Engineers.

Following the pilgrimage from those humble days of creation, it is easy to see that there were some stopping points along the way. For example, aside from turn-of-the-century business owners attempting to restrict their losses, some at that time thought that sprinkler systems could serve other purposes. There were advertisements that advocated sprinklers for the basements even if the remainder of the building was not sprinklered. This concept probably sends shivers down the spines of a contemporary sprinkler-system designers, but at the time it seemed to make a lot of sense.

One must remember that very few true codes existed then. The very idea of a building code and a fire code was undergoing genesis at the same time that these standards were being created. John Damrell, the first NAFE president, was a strong advocate of the sprinkler. They were providing a solution to a specific problem and perhaps did not even believe that the solution applied to problems outside of industry.

Nonetheless, fire and building codes both came into existence with some incipient work in the late 1880s and were formalized in the 1920s. According to the first volume of the fire codes, sprinklers were not a significant issue.

One thing that gave sprinklers a boost, believe it or not, was World War II. A lot of heavy industries had to be put on line that required large-area buildings. The federal government endorsed sprinklers as part of the national defense strategy. Many facilities such as aircraft hangers, assembly areas and logistical warehouses were outfitted with sprinkler technology that was essentially 60 years old. Visit a military facility built before 1940 to see such examples.

With the creation of national code groups such as the Uniform Building Code, the Southern Building Code Congress and the Building Officials Congress of America, sprinklers began to appear in code amendments. According to Steve David Hart of the National Fire Sprinkler Association, the adoption of sprinkler technology into these codes occurred incrementally over 20 years.

The concept of residential sprinklers was initiated with a series of discussions in the early 1970s. The Los Angeles City Fire Department did a research project, supervised by soon-to-be Fire Chief Don Manning, to come up with a residential sprinkler system. San Clemente, Calif., soon to undergo major land development, embraced residential sprinklers in the early 1970s, even prior to the creation of another set of standards that would apply only to residential occupancies.

The original NFPA document had morphed into NFPA 13. This standard for the installation of fire protection systems had been a standby for most fire departments since the early 1990s. Discussion about creating a standard for apartment complexes came out of work by Chief David Hilton of Cobb County, Ga. Based on activities in California, the idea to create a standard for single-family dwellings merged into a concept called 13D.

The evolution of 13 had been relatively stable and without controversy. The creation of 13D and 13R, however, were not exempt from debate. Many in the sprinkler field contended that some of the ideas being incorporated for residential applications were not appropriate and that the engineering criteria for a 13 system should continue to prevail.

San Clemente's ordinance was followed shortly by the proliferation of residential ordinances adopted in places such as Cobb County; Prince George's County, Va.; Scottsdale Ariz.; and other locations. This put continued pressure to introduce a residential-sprinkler amendment to the fire code. It would be an understatement to say that there was controversy associated with this decision. It was difficult enough to obtain acceptance of local amendments that required sprinklers. Getting it into the fire code has been charged heavily with advocacy and adversity.

Meanwhile, there was a track record of applying sprinklers to smaller buildings through the fire and building codes. In a series of amendments, the use of NFPA 13 systems began to be required in buildings of lesser and lesser square footage. This evolution, significant in terms of changing the nature of the fire problem, went relatively unnoticed in the political process because it emerged through testimony and hearings that were predominately conducted among advocates of the system. There were few naysayers in the code adoption process.

Currently there are several proposals to add an amendment to the building code that would require single-family dwellings to include sprinklers. It is a question of time as to whether or not this idea will reach fruition. What is significant, however, is that it has now occurred. Anyone who would have anticipated 25 years ago that this would be advocated by 2007, probably would have been laughed at.

The interesting thing about this revolutionary process is that there has been a generational change in the fire service. There also has been a generational change in those who stood to benefit or are impacted by these ordinances in the field of design and development. Each new generation is considering the same pilgrimage started by the early pioneers.

Harry Marriott, the Australian fire protection engineer, who wrote the history of sprinklers for that nation and then lived to be close to 100 years old, once told me that the journey would never be over. I am reminded that those who follow religious pilgrimages often go back to the site of their devotion more than once. Perhaps the fate of the sprinkler movement of this country is that many people will choose to make this pilgrimage over a period of time. Some can be seen going in the direction of the concept and some might be seen going away from the direction of the concept. Regardless of which direction the individuals are trekking, the site chosen for the quest remains the same. The protection of life and property is in your own hometown or the place you serve. It may not be Mecca, but it is a place where you can make a difference.

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With more than 40 years in the fire service, Ronny J. Coleman has served as fire chief in Fullerton and San Clemente, Calif., and was the fire marshal of the State of California from 1992 to 1999. He is a certified fire chief and a master instructor in the California Fire Service Training and Education System. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers, he has an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in vocational education.