in West Warwick assembles a sprinkler
system.
Local businesses say costly improvements are worth it
Sprinklers and fire alarm systems can save business owners time and money, save them from fire and smoke damage and from human liability. And in the wake of The Station fire on Feb. 20 – the worst nightclub fire in Rhode Island’s history that killed 99 people – business owners are being even more cautious when it comes to fire safety in the workplace.
According to Mike Haigh, vice president of Allied Fire Protection Inc. in West Warwick, more local businesses have been calling and asking for price quotes and estimates on sprinkler systems. The company’s workload might pick up in a few months, when more businesses decide they’ll eventually be required to have sprinklers, and have budgeted for them.
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Allied Fire Protection is currently installing sprinklers in the new Shaw’s in Providence, Haigh said. Another club in Providence is having a system installed and Mardi Gras, one of the nightclubs closed down after The Station fire for violations, has contacted the company and is interested in hiring them, he said.
Michael J. LePizzera Jr., a trial lawyer and owner of the West End Café in Cranston, closed his restaurant and bar in late February to re-evaluate the building’s safety. He re-opened the café – now outfitted with more marked exits, fire extinguishers, improved electrical wiring and a state-of-the-art fire alarm system – almost a month later.
“I felt that it wasn’t as safe as it could have been,” he said. Although LePizzera’s building, 12 former condominium units built in the 1980s, is “grandfathered in” under the older state fire safety code, the owner said he wanted to be able to provide his customers with safer dining and entertainment. The West End Café also features weekend entertainment.
“The issue shouldn’t be whether it’s grandfathered in,” he said. “It should be: is it as safe as it should be.” LePizzera said he had city fire and building officials take a look at his establishment, where he said they found a few potential hazards. Because of the capacity of his café, he was required to have two working exits, LePizzera said. Although he had two doors in the front of the building that could have been used, only one was in accordance with the safety code.
“I had the doors, but one, I didn’t necessarily use it,” he said. “I decided to increase the minimum amount three times. Luckily I had the doors” to do that. Now the West End Café has six exits, all lighted and with fire extinguishers next to them, LePizzera said. All of the doors that are not the main entrance are also outfitted with special locks so that they cannot be locked from the inside.
“I could have saved a lot of money without the signs and door equipment,” LePizzera said. And although he said he would have had the improvements done anyway, LePizzera said it was difficult to close for a month and then re-open.
“People don’t realize I’m open,” he said. “Our sales are down 50 percent.”
In addition to the lack of customers after re-opening, LePizzera said all of his improvements cost him somewhere in the range of $20,000 to $30,000, when he receives the last of his bills.
“The fire alarms were not up to today’s standards and I felt it was prudent to put them in if I had closed it down and put up lights and fixed the doors,” LePizzera said.
For that sum, however, the West End Café has an updated alarm system that will allow firefighters to locate a fire based on a zoned firebox that will light up wherever the fire is. LePizzera also removed a toilet and sink that were in the same room as the heating system and outfitted the room in special plaster and sheet rock and a steel door, making the room flame retardant for one hour, per the fire department’s specifications. He also relocated an electrical panel in a bad spot along a wall.
For Sen. Leonidas P. Raptakis, owner of Venus Pizza restaurant in Coventry, installing a sprinkler system, even 25 years ago, was something he didn’t think twice about doing. When he installed a dry pipe sprinkler system in his restaurant in 1978, it cost him $15,000. Now, he said, the same system costs $49,000. A normal wet system (with water constantly running through it, costs about $25,000.) The benefits of having sprinklers, however, are now indisputable, Raptakis said.
“Sprinklers would have done the job over there,” he said of the nightclub fire.
As to why a club like The Station still isn’t required to have sprinklers, Raptakis guessed that installing the systems 20 years ago wasn’t cost effective.
“Everything’s been written around economic factors,” he said. If sprinkler systems cost $5,000 instead of $15,000 two decades ago, the senator guessed that more owners would have installed them.
According to Richard Skinner, New England regional manager of the National Fire Sprinkler Association Inc., a wet sprinkler system – with water constantly in the pipes – costs $20,000 to $25,000 today. Prices vary because many outfitters charge by the square foot. According to Haigh, an existing restaurant might be charged $3 to $4 per square foot for a system. The company might install a sprinkler system for Mardi Gras, Haigh said, which at approximately 16,000 square feet of space, could cost more than $40,000 to outfit.
For LePizzera, however, it wasn’t about the money for the alarm system and other improvements. It was an issue of safety and comfort.
“I think I went above and beyond what I needed to do,” LePizzera said. “It has to be the safest place it could be. I had to do everything. I didn’t want to take any chances.”
The café, which has a capacity of 130 with the tables out (LePizzera takes some of them out when he has live entertainment), is now more than safe, he said.
“With 130 (people) and six doors, people are going to get out,” he said. “It was an absolute no-brainer.”
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