Sprinkler saved woman in home fire

WALKER, Mich. (WOOD) - You can see where the fire started. The sun shines through the gaping hole at the back of the mobile home that, before Tuesday, Darlene Burke called home.

She'd laid down for a nap Tuesday afternoon.

The fire started at the opposite end of the home. Investigators say it was accidental, probably involving electricity.

Burke has several medical problems, including narcolepsy. She says that's probably why she slept through the noise made by the smoke detectors in her home.

"I woke up, I heard the sound of, like, something exploding," said Burke. "I rolled over my bed and opened the bedroom door and all I could see is just black smoke. I slammed the door, rolled over the bed, opened up the window, pushed the screen out and jumped out the window," she said, describing her escape outside the burnt shell of her home in the Apple Tree Estates Park.

Her escape came without a moment to spare.

Firefighters said the temperature in that hallway leading to her bedroom reached between 500 and 700 degrees. But it cooled just before it hit the bedroom door.

Walker Fire Marshall Phil McCormack took us inside the home, showing us where the fire started, and where it slowed down at the bedroom door.

"Some of the molding is gone. So we did have enough heat here to start melting it. But, when you open up the bedroom door, there's virtually no damage in this bedroom."

Walker firefighters arrived a few minutes later. As they knocked down the hot spots., they noticed something unusual in the furnace room.

It was a sprinkler head, installed in the home when it was built about 30 years ago. The stream from the sprinkler was just enough to cool the superheated gasses headed for the bedroom.

"One can only guess at the end result," McCormack said, "but I'm guessing it wouldn't have been good."

State officials are considering making sprinkler systems mandatory in all newly built home. The building industry is fighting the move. They say the systems are fine as an option. But builders are concerned with adding mandatory costs to a home in a slumping industry.

Supporters say the Walker fire makes their case.

"They're designed to save lives," McCormack said.

The manufacturing of mobile homes is regulated by the federal government. McCormack says he can't find any law on the books requiring sprinklers in the homes.

It apparently was an option.

In this case, it's one that saved a life three decades later.

"I just never thought that it was going to save my life," Burke said. "It never dawned on me. "