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January 16, 2008

Plan would exempt some small businesses from fire code

PROVIDENCE -- Small, “non-hazardous” businesses of 2,500 square feet or less would be exempt from the state’s uniform fire code, under proposed regulations developed by the state Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review and Fire Marshal Frank Sylvester.

Sylvester, Fire Board Chairman Rene Coutu, and Tom Coffey, the board’s executive director, outlined the proposals before the Senate Committee on Housing and Municipal Government today.

Some fire alarm installation deadlines would also be extended by the new regulations, and full-alarmed performance theaters that seat fewer than 500 would be allowed to operate without a full sprinkler system -- if the theaters provided double the normal exit capacity and sprinkler coverage over the stage.

The board has been refining the extensive new regulations for months, and plans to present them and take comments at a public hearing Feb. 11. The regulations could be in effect as soon as March 1, said Coffey.

Last summer, a bill that would have eased the fire code’s effects on businesses passed the Rhode Island House in the last hours of the legislative session, but died in the Senate. Leadership in the Senate said the bill came too late to review.

After the bill failed to pass, its architects -- Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick, and former Rep. Peter T. Ginaitt, D-Warwick -- and Governor Carcieri urged the Fire Board to enact many of the bill’s proposals through regulations.

The proposed changes in the bill had come from hearings conducted by the House Oversight Commission to Study the Ramifications of the Fire Safety Code, an advisory committee led last year by Ginaitt and Trillo.

The panel had been charged with studying the effects of the 2003 fire code. That code, which was approved in the months after The Station nightclub burned down on Feb. 20, 2003, killing 100 people and injuring another 200, adopted national standards, removed grandfather protection that had shielded older buildings from newer codes, and added special requirements for nightclubs and other places where people gather.

Many business owners complained that the new code required too many expensive changes to their properties, and they turned to the legislature for relief.

Coffey said the proposed regulations drew heavily from the bill that failed last year.

-- Journal staff writer Mark Arsenault

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 6:25 PM | Permalink

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