PROVIDENCE -- The state fire marshal's chief of inspections tried in 30 minutes yesterday to explain a fire code that has evolved over 30 years into a quagmire of regulations, spread over five books.
First there's the state's Fire Laws and Rules, William Howe testified to the legislative commission studying fire safety.
There's the National Fire Protection Association's Fire Prevention Code, a set of national standards that the state has adopted, known as NFPA-1.
And Rhode Island also uses NFPA-101, known as the Life Safety Code.
There's the Rehabilitation Code, too, a different set of rules created to encourage re-use of vacant or underused buildings.
And, for cases of older buildings "grandfathered" out of modern regulation, an inspector must keep handy the state's 1968 fire regulations.
Howe's explanation of which code applied when and where was like an Abbott and Costello routine.
To summarize: You can't use one book unless you check in another, because laws that adopt some standards may also modify them, or maybe not.
"It's kind of a convoluted process," Howe said. "Just determining where you start is a convoluted process."
The General Assembly created the 17-member special fire safety commission in the days following the Feb. 20 disaster at The Station in West Warwick, the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. The fire, ignited by pyrotechnics used to open a rock show, killed 99 people and injured some 190.
The panel, which includes legislators, and representatives from state government, firefighting agencies and the business community, is charged with examining the state's codes and recommending ways to make people safer.
Howe told the commission that he knows the state's fire code well, having worked with it through its evolution. But mastering the code is daunting for new inspectors, he said.
"It is very difficult to teach new people what the process is," he said.
The code is so unwieldy it is possible, Howe said, for two people to read it differently, and come up with different ways of applying it.
"Folding this into one document certainly would make a lot of sense," Howe said.
Sen. John Celona, D-North Providence, commission cochairman, said he was struck by Howe's testimony. The fire codes "are a mess," Celona said. "That's what we got out of this tonight."
The committee also heard last night from Richard A. Skinner, a former firefighter and the regional manager for the National Fire Sprinkler Association Inc., a trade group.
Skinner recommended the elimination of the "grandfather" clause that exempts old buildings from modern fire regulation.
He contended that all buildings in which people assemble should have sprinkler systems.
The cost to retrofit sprinklers into a building in this part of the country is about $3 to $3.50 per square foot, Skinner said. Including sprinklers in new construction costs about half as much, he said.
He knows of no other state that is forcing building owners to retrofit existing buildings with sprinklers, though several states are considering such measures, he said.
Vincent P. Calenda, a senior investigator for the private firm Engineering and Fire Investigations, testified that he has investigated numerous fires in buildings with and without sprinklers, "and it always appears that the unsprinklered buildings have the greater fire damage."
The commission will meet again April 3 to hear experts on building code, insurance and taxation, Celona said.
