Public Law 101-391, also known as The Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act, requires federal employees to stay in fire-safe lodging facilities. This is an Act of Congress that was signed by President George H. W. Bush on September 25, 1990. The main purpose of this Act is to save lives.
To be considered fire-safe, lodging facilities must have:
- hard-wired, single-station smoke detectors in each guestroom in accordance with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standard 72; and
- an automatic sprinkler system, with a sprinkler head in each guest room in compliance with NFPA standards 13 or 13R. Properties three stories or lower in height are exempt from the sprinkler requirement.
Over 400 Americans died in hotel fires in the 1970s and 1980s. Later investigations revealed that if smoke detectors or sprinklers had been in place, the loss of lives would have been none or greatly reduced.
The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), a part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is tasked with maintaining and publishing the Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act of 1990 National Master List of all establishments that meet the fire-safe requirements.
Lodging facilities must register with USFA and get their state’s approval that they are fire-safe in order to be added to the Master List. A benefit to being added to this list is participation in the government’s travel business.
To find out if an establishment is fire-safe, review the list at www.usfa.dhs.gov/applications/hotel.
The use of FedRooms, a government wide lodging program, ensures that all participating facilities meet the fire-safe requirements. There are over 6,000 properties on the current listing of FedRooms’ preferred hotels at http://www.gsa.gov/fedrooms.
By Pam Enlow
The contents of this message are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the Government or my agency.