Editorial: Changing times, technologies give cause to renew debate about sprinkler mandates

The people living in the Barrington Hills home that went up in flames last weekend were, by all accounts, lucky. Nobody died. Had the house fire started in the middle of the night, the story could have been different.

A brush fire in the back of the house got out of hand when burning debris blew over to the side of the $1 million-plus home and traveled up the outside of the structure to the attic. Forty fire departments from all over northern Illinois and 30 tankers of water — a fortune in manpower and equipment — couldn’t keep the house from being destroyed.

Read the full Daily Herald editorial here.