Editor’s Note: Sponge Bob’s All Wet

Hollywood is playing with fire. When fire sprinklers are present in a house that catches fire, only the sprinkler closest to the flames will spray water. But Hollywood movies continue to show all sprinklers going off at once, thereby stoking the most common misconception about home fire sprinklers.

In a recent study, 90 percent of fires that occurred in sprinklered homes were quickly controlled with a single sprinkler, according to the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition. When the temperature from a fire reaches 130-150 degrees, the sprinkler closest to the flames automatically opens and sprays water over the area, providing plenty of time for a family to escape from fire unharmed.

Fire sprinklers are widely viewed as the ultimate fire protection technology. HFSC maintains that having both smoke alarms and a fire sprinkler system reduces the risk of death in a home by fire by 82 percent. Furthermore, sprinkler mishaps are generally less likely and less severe than home plumbing system problems.

Despite the facts, Hollywood movies include preposterous scenes where every sprinkler in an entire system sprays water all at once. Most recently, “The Incredibles” and “Sponge Bob Square Pants” contained such scenes. Similar scenes can be found in as “Changing Lanes” with Ben Affleck, “The Matrix” with Keanu Reeves, and “Die Hard” with Bruce Willis.

The sprinkler gags draw laughs. But HFSC Chair Gary Keith says there is nothing funny about turning off homeowners who would otherwise choose to install fire sprinklers. “If even one homeowner walks away from a theater with second thoughts about installing sprinklers in their home, the movies have done a real disservice to public safety,” he says.

Perhaps reality television will come to the rescue. Fox TV’s “Renovate My Family” and ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” have both recently included home fire sprinklers in projects. But there’s a lot more at risk than a product’s image. Every year, more than 3,000 people are killed in home fires.

Fire chiefs have for decades called for increased fire sprinkler protection in homes; yet today only two to four percent of residential properties are protected by sprinklers. That dismal record may be about to change. The National Fire Protection Association has developed new rules that include requiring fire sprinklers in all new construction of one- and two-family dwellings. They are likely to start communities talking.

While Hollywood’s wet scenes do not help, the home sprinkler industry also needs to produce its own campaign to educate us, including Hollywood scriptwriters, how fire sprinklers work to save lives and property in private residences, what they add to the cost of construction and why the new sprinkler rules should be adopted.