The apartment fire that left three people dead could create a new debate over fire safety regulations in Lawrence.

The chairman of the city’s Fire Code Board of Appeals said Monday that he expected to hear renewed calls to place sprinkler systems in apartment buildings following Friday’s deadly blaze at the Boardwalk Apartments complex in the 500 block of Fireside Drive.

“It is inevitable that some of those issues will come back to this board,” said Tom Waechter, chairman of the board.

But sprinklers come with a significant price tag. Tracy Green, another member of the city’s fire code board, said that’s why he’s uncertain of the need for new requirements.

“In a perfect world, everybody would have a fire sprinkler and there would never be a big fire to fight,” Green said. “But in this world you do have to deal with economics.”

Lawrence may be especially vulnerable to large fires like the one at Boardwalk. U.S. Census Bureau figures show nearly 24 percent of all housing units in the city are in buildings with five or more living units. The national average is 15 percent.

Mark Bradford, interim chief of Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical, said during a news conference Monday that the 76-unit Boardwalk Apartments building was not required to have a sprinkler system at the time it was built. City officials have said the building was constructed in 1965.

Since that time, the city adopted codes mandating all new apartment buildings to have sprinkler systems if they are at least three stories tall or have 16 or more living units. Statistics weren’t immediately available on how many buildings in Lawrence fall under the requirement.

The city could order older buildings to add sprinkler systems. City commissioners in 1993 required fraternity and sorority houses to install sprinkler systems within seven years because there were a frequent number of fires at the houses.

“They were having big fires,” City Manager Mike Wildgen said of the sorority and fraternity houses. “There were statistics that one out of three were burning every 10 years.”

But there was no similar evidence for apartments, and the city did not extend the requirement to older apartment buildings.

Waechter said he was convinced sprinklers should receive more attention.

“I think by far they are the best way to go in terms of protection of life and safety,” Waechter said. “And they are proving more affordable over time.”

Many of the greek houses spent $30,000 to $40,000 in the late 1990s to install their new systems, officials said.

Waechter said even before Friday’s fire, the fire board had planned on discussing whether to replace the city’s existing fire code – which is based on the Uniform Fire Code – with regulations that are based on the International Fire Code. The international code generally places more emphasis on sprinkler system usage, he said.

– Staff writer Mike Belt contributed to this report.