Nearly every new building in Leawood has a sprinkler system to fight fires. And nearly every old building that undergoes remodeling gets one, too.

Gene Hunter, Leawood’s fire marshal, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We’ve had two fires at the Tomahawk Creek apartments,” Hunter said of a large complex in the Kansas City suburb. “One of them occurred on a Saturday morning. It was a cooking fire. In both cases, the sprinkler system put the fires out pretty quickly.”

That, he said, probably saved lives.

“It’s the holy grail of fire safety,” Hunter said, “is to get a sprinkler in every building.”

Sprinkler requirements are being discussed in Lawrence again in the aftermath of last week’s deadly fire at Boardwalk Apartments, in which three people were killed. That building was not required to have sprinklers when it was built in 1965.

The chief objection to mandating such systems: cost. Even fire safety experts acknowledge that it would be a burden on owners of old apartment buildings to require installation of new $30,000 sprinkler systems.

Timothy Hoover, of Huxtable & Associates, works on plumbing at the Hobbs Taylor Lofts at Eighth and New Hampshire streets, as the new building is equipped with sprinklers.

“It’s just unpopular to do that,” said Karl McNorton, chief deputy state fire marshal for Kansas.

But new federal legislation might offer the chance to make Lawrence – and every city – as safe as Leawood without spending tens of thousands of dollars in every old structure.

Tax breaks

That legislation, introduced in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, would offer property owners major tax breaks if they retrofit their old buildings with new sprinkler systems.

“It certainly would provide a big incentive for many different occupancies,” said Gary Keith, vice president of building and life safety for the National Fire Protection Assn. in Quincy, Mass.

The International Association of Fire Chiefs is also backing the legislation.

“We believe it’s important that all buildings have sprinklers,” said Ken LaSala, director of government relations for the IAFC in Fairfax, Va.

McNorton suggested that fire alarms and smoke detectors are more important than sprinklers in saving lives.

“Early notification is a real plus,” he said. “Sprinkler systems do more to save property than to save lives.”

One NFPA study indicated that sprinkler systems can reduce life and property loss from fires by as much as two-thirds. Still, the association recommends that even new single-family homes have sprinkler systems, it refrains from guidelines suggesting that old buildings be retrofitted.

“We recognize that’s a difficult thing to do,” Keith said.

The cost

That makes Leawood an exception. All new buildings – except for single-family homes and duplexes – must be sprinkled. For older buildings, Hunter said, regulations there require property owners to spend up to 20 percent of the cost of any remodeling on sprinkler systems.

Because sprinkler systems are so expensive, he said, that means inexpensive remodeling projects are generally exempt from the requirement.

“It is expensive, there’s no doubt about that,” Hunter said. “But there is the argument, what would three lives be worth in that apartment complex?”

LaSala said the tax legislation might remove the economic burden. If it passes, he suggested, it might be because of reactions to fires like the one at Boardwalk.

“People usually get to know this issue,” he said, “because of fires such as this.”