When Shawn Newberry first started working in the fire service 18 years ago, he responded to a fire that ripped through an Aloha, Ore., apartment complex that killed eight people.
“That story stuck with me,” he said. “It was my first major call as a volunteer.”
The apartments didn’t have sprinklers, he said, which contributed to the deadly blaze’s destruction.
“You just wonder what could have been if that had been the standard back then,” he said.
Newberry, assistant chief at Clark County Fire District 6, said he is proud to see how things have changed over the years in terms of fire safety and building codes.
“It’s remarkable how far we’ve come,” he said. “I know sprinklers save lives.”
He points to the ArdenWood Station apartment complex at 9517 N.E. Hazel Dell Ave. as an example of one of the newest apartment complexes built within Fire District 6 to meet 2012 building and fire codes.
The 150-unit Hazel Dell complex, which is still under construction, has six to 10 sprinklers in each unit, as well as sprinklers in the stairwells, attic and on porches.
“The one thing that makes that complex kind of unique is that it was required to have sprinklers in the attic,” Clark County Assistant Fire Marshal Richard Martin said.
The new complex also has features such as fire-resistant rock wool between floors and fire putty around outlet boxes — all modern features designed to slow or stop a fire.
“To have a project like this going in is a really big deal to us,” Newberry said. “It’s a real feather in our cap.”
The amount of damage from the three-alarm fire March 17 at Bridge Creek Apartment Homes, which was first issued building permits in 1989, could have been lessened if these features were in place, Martin said.
The Bridge Creek fire damaged 18 units, displacing between 60 and 70 people and resulting in about $1.5 million in damage. The fire, which started in a third-floor hallway, was most likely caused by improperly disposed smokers’ materials, Martin said.
“If Bridge Creek would have had those sprinklers, (the sprinklers) would have either extinguished the fire, or at least controlled it,” Martin said. “There were sprinklers inside the living areas, but at the time that it was built, they weren’t required to put what we call exposure heads (sprinklers) on the porches or the balconies.”
The fire at Bridge Creek spread to the attic, which Martin points out is a tricky place for firefighters to get to.
“The roof is designed to keep water out,” Martin said. “It’s really hard to fight those fires because they are in a big open space; you have no access to them until you pull a ceiling below it.”
The ArdenWood Station apartments were required by fire code to have sprinklers in the attic because of the number of units, the size of buildings and their proximity to each other.
