NFPA.ORG/INCENTIVES Read the recent NFPA report on home structure fires. Read articles by ProPublica on the homebuilding industry's war on home fire sprinklers. HOME FIRE SPRINKLERS INCENTIVE OPTION The How planners and AHJs are engaging homebuilders with an array of creative incentives to encourage the installation of home fire sprinklers. B Y L O R R A I N E C A R L I H OME FIRE SPRINKLERS HAVE BEEN PROVEN as the best protection available to minimize home fire injury and death for both civilians and responding firefighters. Even so, this life-saving solution is being blocked in more than half the states in the country. For more than a decade, the NFPA and International Code Council model national codes have included requirements to install fire sprinklers in all new one- and two-family homes. But that important progress has been stymied by national homebuilder and real estate groups that have waged an unprecedented campaign at every level to stop home fire sprinkler codes. Their antagonism continues to this day, bankrolled by hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of lobbying money. The NFPA Fire Sprinkler Initiative has tracked the result of this dogged and expensive activity: 29 states currently prohibit statewide and new local sprinkler adoptions. u Home Fire Sprinkler feature_05.20 V3 FINAL.indd 84 5/2/20 5:30 PMhttp://NFPA.ORG/INCENTIVES