BY BILL MANNING
Hopefully in two years or so, fire protec-tion specialists and many others will breathe a collective sigh of relief as Central Sprinkler’s rubber O-ring debacle comes to a close.
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That day will mark the eight years it will have taken for the rubber O-ring farce finally to play out. Eight years is a lot of fires. Measured in “fire safety years,” millions of automatic sprinklers in doubt since 1995 is a long, long time.
Remember 1995, when Central’s Omega-brand automatic sprinkler first came under criticism? Within two years, the evidence of Omega failures both in field tests and actual fires had mounted, attracting media attention.
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Central strategically reacted by attacking sprinkler installers as the problem. When that failed, the company tried to blame the oils used to cut steel pipe, even though Omega failures had occurred in copper and PVC pipe systems.
Underwriters Laboratories, the unaccountable, third-party product safety certification service that (for a price) tested the Omegas and slapped on them its “good to go” UL label, supported its customer, Central. It cited water contaminants, not sprinkler design, as the problem-even though by its own testing, 30 percent of 800 Omega field samples failed to meet the UL test criteria. And some sprinkler advocacy groups, fearful of negative publicity from the Omega fallout, panicked, promulgating the argument that “almost” was good enough for automatic sprinklers and the NFPA sprinkler standard was simply archaic-a truly bizarre position that helped Central and compromised public safety.
But in 1998, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) tore down the circus tent by forcing Central to recall and replace eight million Omega sprinklers. We thought that was the end of it. We were wrong.
In July 2001, the CPSC and Central jointly announced Central’s voluntary recall of all Central sprinklers with rubber O-rings-35 million sprinklers in all (33 million wet sprinklers with O-rings manufactured between 1989 and 2000 and two million dry sprinklers with O-rings made between the mid-1970s and June 2001; the recall also covers about 170,000 O-ring sprinklers manufactured by the Gem Sprinkler Company and Star Sprinkler Inc.). According to the CPSC, that number represents the third largest replacement program in the history of the Commission.
This time around, things appear calm. Rhetoric is almost nonexistent. The CPSC, in a press release dated July 19, 2001, says, “Central … is voluntarily launching this program to provide enhanced protection to its sprinkler customers.” Perhaps such sugarcoating is an amenity extended by the CPSC for product manufacturers that offer a recall. Don’t be fooled.
First, this isn’t about enhanced protection; it’s about sprinklers that work.
Second, the recall carries with it the admission that Central’s rubber O-ring sprinkler setup was a failure of design. Why, in the name of life safety, did it take six years for Central to own up?
Third, and to answer that question, day and night, in back rooms under glaring lights, bean counters run mathematical analyses comparing the cost of product liability exposure vs. the cost of product replacement. Thirty-five million O-rings is a lot of exposure, quadruple the exposure of eight million O-rings.
After the CPSC’s 1998 recall, of course, Central didn’t have UL arrogance for cover, as it had in 1997. That forced recall was a UL embarrassment. So UL put its Standard for Safety for Automatic Sprinklers for Fire Protection Service (UL 199) back on the drawing table. It conducted a two-year field investigation of O-ring sprinkler performance and, on July 9, 2001, published a revised UL 199 standard such that O-ring water seal constructions are no longer permitted. The restriction will take effect January 2003-some eight years after O-ring sprinkler failures first came to public light.
The Central O-ring recall is great news for the life safety community, great news for life safety. It would not have happened without the dedication and vigilance of fire protection engineers and members of fire prevention bureaus who work out in the field every day, inspecting, checking, measuring, field testing. Dedication to the decidedly unglamorous job of fire protection is what saved us in this case and what will save the fire service in the future.
We’ve been lucky. Fortunately, there have been no reported deaths of civilians or firefighters attributed to failed O-ring sprinklers. But the sprinklers are still out there-35 million of them. It’s imperative that fire departments work within their communities to hasten their replacement as quickly as possible.
Bill Manning
