Joe Kelly at the Iowa Manufactured Housing Association alerted us to another story about manufactured homes making the pages of the Des Moines Register. MHMSM.com recently responded to a story in the paper about fire safety in manufactured homes, pointing out mis-use of terminology. The use of the terms showed somewhat of an improvement in the more recent article. Also dealing with fire safety issues, though the article did use the “T-word” to describe older pre-HUD code mobile homes, the only time “manufactured home” was used was in the context of taking another look at requiring sprinklers in manufactured homes. As Kelly confirms, any such requirement would have no impact on fire safety in the older homes. “The sprinkler requirement would only apply to new structures,” Kelly says, also noting that the Iowa legislature dropped a move to mandate sprinklers on modular homes in the last session.  The article did, however, include a quote from Ray Reynolds, Iowa’s state fire marshal, saying, “We do need to be proactive, so when the newer homes become the old mobile homes of tomorrow, at least people have a chance of surviving.” It should be pointed out that when the newer homes do become older homes, they will still have been built to the excellent safety and manufacturing standards implemented in 1976.