April 8, 2011

NFPA produced three ads in recent weeks: two in Pennsylvania, where anti-sprinkler legislation was being filed, and one in USA Today featuring our Faces of Fire campaign. Each ad serves the greater purpose of educating the public on the life saving benefits of residential fire sprinklers.

On April 7, USA Today published this ad depicting three individuals from our Faces of Fire campaign who have leant personal stories to our efforts in educating decision-makers on the need for sprinklers in one- and two- family homes.  It reached more than three million people.

In Pennsylvania, while special interests continued their effort – through HB 377 – to repeal an existing requirement in the Uniform Construction Code for home fire sprinklers in new homes, NFPA designed this ad for publication. The area newspaper rejected the ad saying that it was not in their best interest to print an ad that mentioned the recent incident involving the seven children. (Not sure what that means given it was covered as a news story)

The below ad was ultimately accepted for publication. Coincidentally, it ran at the same time a sprinkler advocate in Pennsylvania, the executive director of the National Fallen Firefighters Association Ron Siarnicki, wrote an article citing two home fires; one in a sprinklered home and one in a non sprinklered home. The un-sprinklered home fire resulted in the death of seven children while the sprinklered home fire had no fatatilities.