This quote from the Globe article....
The sprinkler system was installed but not yet active, with inspections planned for later this week.
... seems a bit ambiguous.
It's been awhile since the last time I was closely connected to the construction side of a project of this scale (i.e., with sprinklers) as it neared completion, but my memory is that the sprinklers were pressurized and thoroughly tested and functional before the FD inspections took place. The FD doesn't want to be doing their inspections while installers are still working out the kinks. So if inspections that the reporter was saying were planned for later this week were FD inspections, I'd think there'd have been water in the system and that it'd have already had some extensive testing by the installers. In which case the phrase "not yet active" ought to have been "not yet certified and FD-approved".
However, maybe the reporter meant that it was those initial, installer-led, inspections that were going to start later this week. In which case I could envision that the system hadn't been pressurized yet - terrible timing if that's what happened.
Anyhow, the reporter could have dug a bit deeper there, or else explained a bit better. Seems a hugely critical part of the story here: what was the status of sprinkler system? "Not yet active" from a reporter who probably doesn't understand such systems doesn't really answer it.
If it was truly not at all pressurized yet, then that helps explain how the fire spread so fast, and would also clarify that there was some dreadfully bad luck at play on the timing of that roof transformer igniting.
If on the other hand the sprinkler system was in fact pressurized and had gone through installers' tests and was just awaiting FD inspections, AND if there were fully pressurized sprinkler heads in that cockloft stellarfun mentions, then I'd be a lot more alarmed. That would seem to say something far more damning about how the building performed.
I am relieved to see that only minor injuries were reported, that's good news.
