Many of you may remember the recent horrific Grenfell Towers fire in London and most recently, a fatal fire in an apartment at Trump Tower in New York.
An initial investigation after the Grenfell Towers tragedy revealed that cladding outside the building greatly contributed to the spread of the fire and increased the numbers of fatalities.
But in both fires, there was another significant contributing factor that you need to know about every time you travel — the lack of proper sprinklers in the buildings. In the Grenfell case, no hallways or individual apartments had sprinklers.
And in the Trump Tower blaze, there were no sprinklers installed in the residence floors. In fact, when the building was completed in 1983, fire codes didn’t require them.
How many hotels are now also operating under older building codes that don’t require retrofitting to current codes? It’s a simple but essential question you need to ask before booking any hotel room — is your hotel properly sprinklered? If the hotel doesn’t have the answer or its answer is “we perform to codes,” it’s not an acceptable answer. The hotel either has sprinklers or it doesn’t. That should help you immediately determine if you want to stay there.
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