City reviewing building codes, fire sprinklers

It wasn't called a fire sprinkler summit, but the meeting Thursday afternoon at the Jefferson City Police Department's training classroom attracted dozens of public officials, contractors, architects, insurance executives and business leaders with a shared interest in the current review of the city's building construction codes and fire sprinklers.

Officially, it was a two-hour special meeting of the ad hoc steering committee on building construction codes. Participants included those involved in five subcommittees engaged in a year-long analysis of the city's five codes affecting requirements for and regulation of commercial and residential structures.

The meeting was almost exclusively a review of current building fire sprinkler requirements and a discussion of proposed changes.

Larry Burkhardt, the city's building official, narrated a path through a page-by-page review of the current Jefferson City code amendments, which were established in 2009. Fire Chief Matthew Schofield and Division Chief Jason Turner cited fire safety statistics and state and national context for the issue.

Schofield, using U.S. Fire Administration numbers, said about 108,000 multi-family residential building fires were reported to U.S. fire departments each year. These fires caused an estimated 410 deaths, 4,125 injuries and $1.3 billion in property damage. Those multi-family residential building fires accounted for 29 percent of all residential building fires.

As for the impact of fire sprinklers, the chief cited U.S. Department of Energy information to report fire sprinklers are 98.8 percent effective in curbing fires.

The City Council created the Building Construction Codes committee in December 2015 for the purpose of reviewing and recommending updates to the 2015 version of the International Code Council model building codes. There are five technical subcommittees associated with the building codes committee. It's a temporary panel, which will function until the building code review is completed and the new building code ordinances are passed.

Councilman Rick Prather, the City Council liaison to the committee, said Thursday he anticipated the body completing its work by next May or June.