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Montgomery County updates fire and life-safety code; Melanie Diaz Act provisions noted
Summary
The committee approved Executive Regulation 14-24 to align the county fire code with the 2021 edition and add provisions addressing electrification, EV charging, energy storage systems and emergency action planning tied to the Melanie Diaz Act.
Montgomery County’s Economic Development Committee accepted Executive Regulation 14-24 on July 21, bringing the county’s fire and life-safety regulations into alignment with more recent state and national standards.
Patsy Warnock, a program manager in the Department of Permitting Services who prepared the fire-code amendments, told the committee the county has not updated its fire code since 2015 and that the 2021 edition adds provisions needed for electrification and for new technologies such as energy storage and electric-vehicle charging. "This would bring us up to the same level as the rest of the building department and make sure that we're all in alignment, not only internally, but with the state," Warnock said.
Warnock said the county’s changes include language to address energy storage system safety and EV charging, and that many amendments mirror elements in the State Fire Prevention Code. She flagged a local implementation tied to the Melanie Diaz Act that increases smoke-detection requirements and said that sprinkler changes have largely been addressed and are not part of the local amendments being proposed.
Committee members asked how commissioning reports (required before occupancy in some cases) would be used; Warnock said commissioning verifies that installed systems perform as intended and clarified that the amendment requires commissioning reports to be submitted to the authority having jurisdiction. She also described a separate local regulation the department is drafting to implement emergency-action-plan requirements from the landlord-tenant provisions linked to the bill; the department expects to present those details early next year.
The chair noted the public-safety imperative driving the update and the committee approved Executive Regulation 14-24 by unanimous consent. DPS staff said they will continue public education, outreach and coordination with other agencies as the regulations move toward formal adoption and implementation.
What’s next: DPS will circulate progress reports and a proposed regulation for emergency-action plans tied to the Melanie Diaz Act and will continue coordination with state officials and affected stakeholders.
