It was late, nearly 10 p.m. last June 26 when a 45-year-old Prince George's County man returned to his apartment in the Daniels Run complex in Adelphi.
Hungry and tired, he started fixing a late supper, then sat down on the living room couch while the food heated on the stove. Before long, fire officials said, he was sound asleep, and his meal was in flames. A smoke alarm sounded but did not wake him.
"If he was that sound asleep, and the fire had grown, it would have been tragic," said Prince George's County Fire Department spokesman Pete Piringer. Lives and property in the building's 47 other apartments also were threatened.
Instead, heat from the flames set off the fire sprinkler in the kitchen, extinguishing the fire.
Under 1988 state legislation passed to help reduce fire deaths in Maryland, all new dormitories, hotels, rooming houses and multifamily residential structures connected to public water supplies must be built with fire sprinklers. Last June, the mandate was extended to town house groups with three or more attached units.
Fire safety officials say the law already has saved dozens of lives and millions of dollars in property. But some homebuilders complain that sprinkler systems -- costing up to $3,000 per town house -- help make homeownership too expensive for many young couples.
No one, however, disputes the sprinklers' ability to save lives.
The man whose dinner burned at Daniels Run in June was awakened by a neighbor and walked out uninjured. By the time firefighters arrived, there was nothing to do but set up fans to blow smoke from the building. Even the cat survived.
"There was water damage, but my building was saved," said property manager Willa Mae Dupuis.
Prince George's County, a national leader on sprinkler legislation, now requires sprinklers in all new detached single-family and duplex homes as well. Just over 12,000 dwelling units in the county -- about 4 percent of the total -- now have sprinklers, including the Daniels Run apartments, built in 1989.
Today's systems bear little resemblance to the hanging pipes and bulky sprinkler heads seen in commercial and industrial properties since the 1800s. Now, the pipes are hidden in walls or ceilings. The sprinkler heads themselves are small, some the size of thimbles until they pop out and activate at 160 degrees.
