LV building owners urged to look for defective fire sprinklers

Thursday, Oct. 22, 1998 | 11:45 a.m.

Clark County fire officials are trying to find out how many businesses in the area may be affected by the recall of a type of fire sprinkler made by Central Sprinkler Corp.

Some 8.4 million of Central's Omega sprinklers have been recalled nationwide. Clark County is one of 68 counties to which 75 percent of the sprinklers were shipped.

Local fire officials have sent a survey to the 185 contractors licensed to install sprinklers in Nevada trying to find out how many of those were installed in Las Vegas-area buildings.

The sprinklers, manufactured from 1983 to 1998, have been installed in hotels, office buildings, schools, dormitories, federal buildings and homes throughout the country.

Omega sprinklers are installed in the Clark County jail, according to city fire officials.

What is not known yet is whether the potentially defective sprinklers are installed in any of the high-rise hotel-casinos in Las Vegas.

Larry Campbell, contractor for Tri-State Fire Protection, said there may be at least 10,000 Omega sprinklers in the Valley, but does not think many hotels have the sprinklers.

"Mega-resorts are definitely not using the sprinklers," Campbell said. Imperial Palace, the Frontier and Hilton Hotels Corp. properties do not use Omega sprinklers, he said.

Boyd Gaming, which owns the Stardust, California, Sam's Town, Main Street Station and the Fremont, also has no Omega sprinklers, said spokesman Rob Stillwell. Station Casinos also do not use the Omega sprinklers, said spokesman Jack Taylor.

Tri-State quit using Omega sprinklers several years ago, because there were better products on the market, Campbell said.

"We've had enough disaster in the hotel industry, like the MGM fire, that those people don't take this lightly," said Vicki Stevens, deputy state fire marshal.

In November 1980, a fire that started in the deli at the then-MGM Grand Hotel, now Bally's, killed 85 people. A few months later, eight people died in a blaze at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Sprinkler systems were not required at the time those hotels were built, but those blazes spurred the Nevada Legislature to pass some of the toughest high-rise fire safety standards in the country, standards that have been copied in other parts of the country.

If hotels find they have Omegas, "They'll probably want to take care of it right away," Stevens said.

In fact, the requirements for sprinklers in new buildings and for older buildings to be retrofitted is one of the factors cited by stock analysts for Central Sprinkler's success. However, the recall battle, according to Hoover's Company Profile, has embattled the company.

The company said it took a $38 million charge against earnings in the third quarter, which ended in July, to cover the cost of recalling and replacing the heads and settling lawsuits filed in California and Pennsylvania.

A two-year recall battle ended after the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission sued Central Sprinklers to force the recall. In tests, 30 percent to 40 percent of the sprinklers failed to activate, some even when the fire was directly below the sprinkler head. In some buildings, all Omegas tested failed to activate.

The sprinklers have failed since 1990 in 17 fires in California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. Those fires caused a combined $4.3 million in damage. The state fire marshall's office has no record of sprinklers failing in Nevada.

The problem is an O-ring -- designed to keep the sprinkler heads from leaking -- sometimes swells and sticks, keeping the water from getting out at all.

Omega sprinklers are easily identified by the presence of small circular discs at the base of the sprinkler. The discs range from the size of a pencil eraser to as large as a dime.

Central manufactures a broad line of sprinkler heads and components as well as plastic and metal pipes and valves.

The federal commission first became aware of the problem in 1996, said Russ Rader, commission spokesman. The agency asked the company to recall the sprinklers, but it refused. So the agency sued.

"We believed this was a very serious danger," Rader said. "We found very high failure rates. In some cases, the sprinkler directly above the fire did not activate."

Rader said this is only the second incident in the past 10 years where the agency has had to file a lawsuit. Out of the 300 product recalls done each year, 99 percent of the companies are cooperative, he said.

The company finally agreed to the recall because it wanted to be certain its consumers were confident with their products, said Carmine Schiavone, vice president for customer relations.

The State Fire Marshall's Office has sent a letter to area fire sprinkler contractors, asking them to research their files and send the office a list of places the Omega sprinkler heads are installed, Bryon Slobe, assistant state fire marshal, said.

"Once we've received that, we'll contact property owners and give them Central Sprinkler's 800 number," he said. "This is the fastest and most efficient method."

Stevens said the contractors were given 30 days to respond, listing the name of the property, the location, the year installed and any incidents when the sprinkler may have failed.

Slobe added it could be another two weeks before they know exactly how many Omega Sprinklers were installed in Nevada. "We could have 200 or 200,000. I'm not sure where they are or how many."

Once the office knows where the sprinklers are located, the removal of them will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Central Sprinklers is covering the cost of new, glass-bulb sprinkler heads as part of the recall agreement, but it is not covering the full cost of labor to replace them. The estimate to cover full labor costs for all of the potentially defective heads is more than $300 million, said Rader, of the federal commission.

That estimate "is probably three times the value of the company," Rader said. The commission did not want to push the company into bankruptcy, he added.

"It's important that the company stay in business so the consumers will get a free replacement of sprinkler heads sent to the consumers," Rader said.