Terin Hopkins

Manager of Public Fire Protection

When a tragic fire makes headlines, a familiar defense quickly follows:

“The building met all applicable codes and regulations.”

While often technically true, the statement is deeply misleading. Most buildings are constructed to the codes in effect at the time they are built and then allowed to operate for decades without meaningful requirements to upgrade as fire behavior, interior materials, and occupancy risks change. In many jurisdictions, the triggers that would require existing buildings to modernize life-safety systems are weak, narrowly written, or missing altogether. As a result, buildings remain legally compliant while relying on outdated fire protection strategies. Compounding the problem, building and fire codes represent minimum safety thresholds and even those minimums are frequently diluted during local adoption.

The most sobering examples aren’t theoretical. They’re written in the injuries, funerals, lawsuits, and community grief that follow preventable catastrophes, from the Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island to the recent Le Constellation bar fire in Switzerland, where crowded assembly spaces and the absence of modern safeguards like automatic sprinklers followed the same deadly script.

 Compliant “Doesn’t Mean “Safe Enough”

International Codes Council (ICC) model codes are designed to establish a minimum for life safety. They represent a consensus baseline: the least a community should demand to keep people alive when something goes wrong.

But once those models reach the real world, they often go through a political grinder:

• Requirements are delayed by phase-in schedules that never materialize.
• Retrofit triggers are softened or narrowed to smaller subsets of buildings.
• Entire provisions are amended away to avoid cost or controversy.
• Existing buildings are “grandfathered” indefinitely, even when the risk profile is obvious.

That’s how a community can end up with a venue that is “code-compliant” on paper, while still lacking the one feature that consistently turns mass-casualty fires into controllable incidents: automatic fire sprinklers.

Switzerland’s Le Constellation and America’s Station Night Club Fires: The Same Deadly Pattern

In the Swiss Alps, a horrific New Year’s Eve fire at the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana killed 40 people and injured more than 100, many of them teenagers and young adults. Early reporting points to celebratory sparklers or candles igniting ceiling materials, triggering an exceptionally rapid fire spread that left patrons with little time to react. An unofficial fire reconstruction report indicates the fire progressed to flashover and full room involvement in approximately 30 seconds, a timeline consistent with modern fuel loads and interior finishes and one that helps explain the devastating loss of life in an overcrowded assembly space with no margin for escape.

Then came the familiar defense: The owner of the Swiss bar Le Constellation, Jacques Moretti, insisted that all safety norms and codes were followed prior to the deadly New Year’s Day fire

If that sounds hauntingly familiar, it should.

The Station nightclub fire (West Warwick, Rhode Island, February 20, 2003) was ignited by indoor pyrotechnics that set foam materials ablaze, producing untenable conditions in minutes. NIST’s investigation concluded that strict adherence to model codes available at the time would have helped prevent similar tragedies and it urged stronger protections, including sprinklers for nightclubs above certain occupancies.

Different countries. Different decades. Different regulatory systems. But the same failure mode:

1. An ignition source used for entertainment (pyrotechnics/sparklers).
2. Combustible or fast-burning interior materials near the ceiling.
3. Crowded conditions and egress constraints.
4. No automatic fire sprinklers stopping flashover and suppressing fire growth early.

And afterward: claims of compliance.

The Model Codes Already Recognized this Risk, Retrofit Automatic Fire Sprinklers for Assembly Occupent-2 venues

Here’s the point that too often gets lost in the public debate: the model fire codes do require retrofit sprinklers in many high-risk assembly settings, particularly the very type of alcohol-serving venues implicated in these tragedies.

The International Fire Code (IFC) added a retrofit requirement in Chapter 11 for existing buildings:

2024 IFC Section 1103.5.1 (Group A-2): where alcoholic beverages are consumed in a Group A-2 occupancy with an occupant load of 300 or more, the fire area containing the A-2 occupancy must be protected by an automatic fire sprinkler system.

This is not a fringe interpretation; it is published directly in ICC’s online code text and has been widely discussed as a post-Station Night Club evolution in the code landscape.

So, if model codes already include this baseline protection for large, alcohol-serving assembly spaces, why do tragedies keep occurring in venues without sprinklers?

Carving Away the Baseline “Amended for Practicality.”

The uncomfortable truth is that the life-safety provisions that matter most, especially retrofits, are often the first to get “amended for practicality.”

A clear example is how jurisdictions have amended the very IFC section intended to retrofit sprinklers in large A-2 occupancies. Some adoption documents narrow the trigger so that it applies only to “nightclubs” as locally defined, rather than broadly to qualifying A-2 fire areas where alcohol is consumed.

That kind of narrowing is not just administrative fine print. It’s the difference between:

• A large bar/venue being required to add sprinklers, versus
• A large bar/venue staying unsprinklered because it doesn’t meet a local label.

And once you allow that logic, retrofits are optional; definitions can be tightened; scope can be reduced, you create a system where owners can truthfully say, “We followed the code,” even when the venue lacks the protections that the model code community believed were essential for existing occupancies.

In other words: compliance becomes a shield, not a safeguard.

“Minimum” Codes aren’t the Finish line

Assembly occupancies are unforgiving. Human behavior under stress, crowd density, unfamiliar exits, smoke obscuration, and rapid heat release can overwhelm even well-maintained egress features. NIST highlighted this reality after The Station and emphasized both adherence to model codes and strengthening them where needed.

That’s why automatic fire sprinklers matter so much in these settings. They don’t require perfect human decision-making. They act early, automatically, and locally, controlling the fire before conditions turn lethal and allowing time for egress and extinguishment by the fire service.

And when owners say, “we complied,” the public should hear the more important question:

Complied with what, model code intent, or a locally reduced version of it?

What should Change After the Next “Compliant” Tragedy?

If we’re serious about breaking the cycle, communities should treat high-casualty assembly fires as what they are: evidence that “minimum” has drifted too close to the cliffs edge.

Practical steps are straightforward:

• Adopt the model retrofit provisions without carve-outs, especially for existing A-2 occupancies meeting the occupant-load thresholds.
• Resist amendments that narrow scope by label “nightclub”
• Treat “passed inspections” as a starting point, not an endpoint, because inspections can confirm the presence of what the law requires, but they can’t replace what the law should require.
• Aligning local codes with the lessons already paid for in blood, from The Station to today’s tragedies.

Because in the aftermath, families don’t grieve the nuance of municipal amendments. They grieve the absence of time. time that automatic fire sprinklers routinely buy.

And that is the central argument we should be willing to say out loud:

If a venue can be “fully code compliant” and still produce a mass-casualty fire under predictable conditions, the problem isn’t just enforcement. It’s that adoption has allowed the minimum to become inadequate.

More about the Author:

Terin Hopkins brings over four decades of fire service and public safety experience to his current role as Manager of Public Fire Protection for the National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA). Beginning his career in 1981 as a Volunteer Firefighter/EMT, Terin went on to serve 25 years with the Prince George’s County (MD) Fire/EMS Department, retiring as station officer in 2010. He then continued his commitment to protecting communities with the Howard County Department of Fire Rescue Services, Office of the Fire Marshal. In 2018, Terin joined NFSA and now serves as a national resource for fire departments, code officials, and policymakers. He represents NFSA on several key NFPA and UL committees, including NFPA 1, NFPA 14, UL 47, and NFPA 13E, shaping the standards firefighters depend on. Terin remains dedicated to bridging the gap between the fireground and the codebook. His mission is to ensure that the voices of firefighters are heard in the standards-making process, while advancing fire protection systems that improve both firefighter safety and civilian survivability.