A frigid night, a “reset” fire alarm system and a near-tragic lesson

I was an engine company lieutenant in an engine, truck and ambulance house with a probationary truck company sergeant. The sergeant was still not following the battalion chief’s requirement that every automatic fire alarm response includes an on-site inspection by the fire department before clearing the incident. If dispatch reported a reset alarm system or “… the caller wants to cancel” the sergeant would immediately return to quarters without proceeding to make an inspection.

Our battalion chief was a strict chain-of-command boss. As we were picking-up from a commercial box alarm after dinner, the chief motioned me over. “Mike, your Sergeant is still not inspecting activated alarm bell incidents. He did it again while covering Engine B on Saturday. This behavior has to stop now.”  This was the boss’s second notice to me. I did not want a third notice. The bitter cold and the wind kept both units running calls well after midnight.

At 4:30 am the engine and truck responded together first due to an activated fire alarm at a trucking company garage in our industrial district. As we arrived, dispatch reported that the fire alarm system reset. I held the first engine and truck and returned the rest of the assignment. On the direct unit-to-unit radio channel, I told everybody to stay on the rigs, the sergeant and I would make a lap of the garage.

Unwanted Fire Alarms

This allowed me to have face-to-face time with the sergeant. While walking around the garage I repeated the chief’s expectations and concern about Saturday’s response. The sergeant responded that most of our activated fire alarms turn out to be false and he did not want to miss a real fire while inspecting a non-fire.

The International Association of Fire Chiefs sponsored a “Fire Alarm Response and Management Summit” in May 2011

In 2009, fire departments went to 16 false alarms for every 10 fires, and 45 false alarms for every 10 structure fires. In 2009, almost half (45%) of false alarm responses were to unintentional activations, one-third (32%) were due to system malfunctions, 8% resulted from malicious or mischievous false alarms, and 15% were due to other false alarms. The ratio of smoke alarm activations to actual fires is even higher in surveys of the public than it is in fire department responses.

In follow-up research, The Fire Protection Research Foundation developed a risk-based decision tool to manage unwanted alarms. This included a literature review on addressing non-household unwanted alarms.

In the fire departments that collected data, between 0.3% to 0.7% of the activated fire alarms in commercial and business occupancies result in a fire event (Hall 2013). The risk-based decision support tool requires the community to determine what type of responses are appropriate for activated fire alarms.

Street Firefighters Focusing on 0.3% to 0.7% of Incidents That Are Fires

The battalion chief’s policy of proceeding to and visually inspecting the occupancy – unwritten and not part of the department’s official regulations – came from his risk evaluation of two unfortunate incidents.

The jurisdiction experienced two large-loss commercial/industrial fires where the fire department responded three different times over a couple of hours to an activated fire alarm in a non-sprinklered occupancy.

In both incidents, the engine crew reset the alarm panel but did not inspect the source of the alarm. On the third activated fire alarm response, the fire had broken through a window or roof. Both events grew to greater alarm incidents.

I explained this to the sergeant and made it clear that he needed to inspect every activated fire alarm occupancy. Continued failure to do this may result in a work improvement plan.

The Keyholder is En Route

Our walk-around the garage showed no evidence of smoke or fire when looking through the truck bay doors or front office windows. I released the truck company and told dispatch we will wait for the keyholder. I knew that the owner was coming and wanted to again try to get a lockbox installed so we could gain access to the building without the owner needing to drive back to work in the middle of a nasty winter night.

Two things were not right when the owner and I entered the garage. The 1970-era fire alarm system was showing a trouble light and we smelled smoke.  There was a driver’s lounge in the garage, added like a mezzanine. It had bathrooms, a kitchenette, a big-screen TV, a dining table and two couches.

Thick black smoke rolled out of the room when the owner opened the lounge door. As the smoke lifted I could see a dull orange glow and a snoring body on a couch.

I radioed in the fire, requested EMS and removed the deeply asleep driver from the room. A primary search found no one else. A tipped-over kerosene heater was the cause of the smoke.

Fire Cause Sequence

The bad weather made this driver hours late returning to the garage. He decided to sleep in the lounge. He used alcohol and a kerosene heater to keep the chill at bay. At some point, he kicked over the kerosene heater. When the smoke detector activated the central fire alarm station, a connection failed. That failure was reported to the central station as an alarm reset.

Not sure if the truck driver’s headache was carbon monoxide poisoning or a hangover, probably both. The garage fixed the fire alarm system. I finally got a lockbox when I explained we would need to force open a door to get into the building on future alarm activations to avoid a repeat of this event.

The sergeant would occasionally remind me that, even following the chief’s directive, we missed the incipient fire in the lounge. What would have happened if nobody entered the garage until work started at 8 am?

In the times when I am awake in a frigid winter pre-dawn, with brightly twinkling stars in a violet-blue sky, I shudder at the still-vivid memory of “… what could have been.”

++++++++++

Aherns, Marty (January 2013) Development of a Risk-Based Decision Support Tool to Assist Fire Departments in Managing Unwanted Alarms. Task 2 Deliverable – Literature Review. Final Report. Quincy. MA: The Fire Protection Research Foundation

Hall Jr., John R. (2013 January 17) Development of a Risk-Based Decision Support Tool to Assist Fire Departments in Managing Unwanted Alarms. Task 5 Deliverable – Model and Tool for Assessing Policies. Final Report. Quincy. MA: The Fire Protection Research Foundation

Ahrens, Marty (2016 June). What’s going on with unwanted alarms? Summary of NFPA’s June 3, 2016. C&E Educational Session. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association

Featured Image: Western Ocean City Business Fire – Caliber Collision  (14 January 2019)   http://www.co.worcester.md.us/fmo-news/west-ocean-city-business-fire-caliber-collision 

Elements, identifiers, and sequence of events may be altered in “war stories” to protect the innocent or work better as an example.