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Fire marshal admits ‘fire code does not apply’ to beach houses
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OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. – Bigger beach houses all along the North Carolina coast are packing people into places where sprinklers and other fire safety measures are not required, state fire marshals say.
“We have hundreds of these homes identical to the one that burned up in Ocean Isle,” said Doug Remaley, fire marshal for Dare County on the Outer Banks.
On Sunday, seven South Carolina college students staying in an Ocean Isle Beach house died when the structure caught fire before 7 a.m. The state’s Building Code Council writes the rules that govern building construction in the state, using international and national standards and making amendments as it sees fit. It is often criticized as being stacked in favor of the building industry and unwilling to impose rules that would increase building safety when the costs are deemed too high.
That’s been the case with fire safety regulations, Remaley said.
Fire safety is addressed in two ways: in the state building code, which dates to the 1930s, and the fire code, established in response to the Imperial Foods chicken plant fire in Hamlet that killed 25 people in 1991.
The building code, which applies to residential as well as commercial construction, dictates such things as building materials, the number of ways into and out of a dwelling and the number and placement of smoke detectors.
The fire code applies only to commercial buildings and to multi-family housing of three units or more, where it prohibits hazards such as grills on wooden deck and obstructions to common hallways. It does not apply to single-family homes, even those such as a current offering in Corolla, on the Outer Banks, that has nine bedrooms, sleeps 28 and rents for almost $13,000 a week in season.
The house that caught fire Sunday morning had six bedrooms. Authorities have not determined the cause of that blaze, which raced through the two-story house in minutes.
Yoho said the house had smoke alarms, which are required by the state, but did not have a sprinkler system, which is not required.
Fire marshals in the state and across the country have pushed for sprinkler systems to be required in new residential construction for years, to little avail. The situation in South Carolina is like that in North Carolina. South Carolina law doesn’t require single-family homes, including vacation cottages, to contain sprinklers, according to the state fire marshal’s Office.
To be effective in a house when a fire first starts and is still small, the systems need to spray less than 100 gallons of water per minute. A fire truck responding to an all-out house fire sprays several hundred gallons per minute.
Ocean Isle residents say their town of about 500 full-time residents is primarily a family oriented beach. There are occasional house parties, but the town typically does not attract huge crowds of young people.
C.D. Blythe, mayor pro tem, said the town has limits on the density of development and building height that are stricter than many towns. He said he didn’t know of anything feasible that could be done to prevent fires like the one that broke out Sunday.
Bo Tate, an Ocean Isle building contractor with Jessie & Myers Construction Co., said fire-safety measures such as sprinklers would be expensive for homeowners and difficult to install and maintain.
Martha Quillin and Jerry Allegood
McClatchy Newspapers
