“Where I live, if you have a registered sprinkler system, you must have it inspected and re-certified EVERY year, at your expense. “
A better idea is to change the materials that houses are made of. Here, because wood is imported but also because Earth quakes, and typhoons the houses are made of concrete. Concrete walls & ceiling and ceramic floors mean that there isn’t much to burn.
Living in the Portland, Oregon area, and surrounded by Weyerhauser, with constant views of cuttings, logging trucks, saw mills, train loads of lumber, I'm a little baffled by "importing".
There is a port on the Columbia, a few miles away, that specializes in loading cut lumber for the Far East. Is that the importing you are suggesting?
Only people who have NO idea of how a sprinkler system actually works, or the cynical system OEMs who are bribing pet legislators to swindle the consumers, would dream of putting these systems in residential housing.
I do not believe that engineering-by-legislation supporters should be tortured to death, for criminal stupidity, but it's at least worthy of consideration.