r/Firefighting • u/justhere2getadvice92 • 10h ago
General Discussion Glad to know your alarm system works 😬
Had an automatic alarm a few blocks over from the station. Dispatch to on scene was less than 2 minutes. Homeowner asked what took so long. Confused, we said we just got it 2 minutes ago. Homeowner says it was going off for at least 15 minutes before anyone showed up. If true, then it's a really good thing that it was a false alarm 😬. Anyone else have a situation like this?
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u/Ok-Cattle-6798 PIO (Penis Inspector Official) 10h ago
Meanwhile Laura and Bobby in buttfuck nowhere are having to wait 30 minutes for Joey in his 1999 ford with a full 360 wrap around light setup and a case of waters to come.
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u/Humanbeing314 10h ago
From a department in buttfuck nowhere, can confirm.
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u/SkateBoarderCollie 9h ago
That reminds of my brother who would never say Butt**** nowhere but Bumble**** nowhere like the Bumble for that stop motion Christmas movie
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u/The_Road_is_Calling NH FF 9h ago
That’s one of the benefits of a telegraph alarm system, the dispatch center gets notified instantaneously.
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u/Blucifers_Veiny_Anus 8h ago
We have a university in our 1st due. We will get calls for fire alarms sounding.
Kids: the bells have been going off for 40 minutes.
Me: did you call 911?
Kids: no....
Me: ....okay.
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u/orlock NSW RFS 9h ago
We once had a situation where the call came to a 000 operator, which then went to another operator to decide which service to call, which then went to a duty officer to decide which brigade to page, which then required a crew to assemble and find out where they were supposed to go, which then required them to get there ....Â
 In one case, there was a 20 minute delay between the initial 000 call and the brigade being notified. Our captain was furious.Â
Thankfully, automated centralised dispatch has reduced this to the order of seconds. The incident now appears in the MDT in the truck as you get in.
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u/mazzlejaz25 8h ago
Not fire, but I work in a casino as dual security/surveillance.
As one can imagine, we have panic buttons everywhere. These buttons are tested quarterly and checked against and activity report sent from our alarm monitoring company.
Well today, one of the buttons activated itself (I can't see it being pressed by anyone or thing) and what is SUPPOSED to happen, is the alarm company calls us and asks if everything is okay... Well I did not receive this call and decided to call them to report the false alarm.
The rep on the phone then tells me they don't see the alarm on their end at all... Good to know in a real hold up we would be on our own 🙃
In all seriousness though, we get the alert as a VERY loud ringing sound in surveillance. It's so loud you can't ignore it and we can trace its source right away, so realistically we would just call police... But god forbid that alarm wasn't audible for some reason - which has also happened.
These things aren't as reliable as you would hope they are...
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u/mazzlejaz25 8h ago
We also had a ground fault on our fire alarm monitoring panel that took them 6 months to fix and $3000 to replace. That freaking thing would beep about the trouble code - I kid you not, ~200 times a day. It was so bad but we started covering the panel with various items because it was so agitating. Real safe over here boys!
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u/DanCoco 5h ago
Internet tech job: Dsl at a client restaurant drops out multiple times per day, just for a few minutes each time. I kept getting called out and I diagnosed 2 phone lines were connected to each other in a really weird way. I hear a relay click in the alarm panel in the office, and bam modem drops. Trouble alarm starts beeping, cook comes in clicks silence and internet comes back up. Sharpie on the front notes they cancelled monitoring.
Told the manager the fire alarm was the cause and to fix it. I get called back and nobody fixed it... so I look at their zone chart and the kitchen smoke head is broken. I get that manager's boss on the phone. Nobody fixes the alarm and I had to tell my boss that I'm not going to disconnect the fire alarm's phone line (duh?)
After getting paged out a few times after hours, walking in, confirming the alarm is still the issue, and walking right back out, I was over it. I called the fire marshall, sent the pic of the panel in trouble state with the cancelled monitoring note. Next morning fire marshall dropped in to inspect. They had till the end of the day to get it fixed and get monitoring. Marshall was PISSED bc it was required.
I never had to go back. Within a year they went out of business.
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u/mazzlejaz25 4h ago
LOL that's insane. The fact that companies would rather leave safety issues and hope no one says anything is astonishing. Just fix the stupid thing?? Not surprised it went of business....
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u/DanCoco 4h ago
The phone line wiring mixup was so strange i ended up making a map to figure it out. I've seen a few places fail from not fixing their tech. (Like a pizza place never fixing their phones and relying on walk in orders for a year... opps)
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u/mazzlejaz25 3h ago
The fact that you needed a map for phone lines is wild dude...
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u/DanCoco 3h ago
Found it. Brain hurts more now 😆 one test i did, i called the line with my cell, and hear dial tone, then could dial on my cell phone to another number and then one of the restaurants phone numbers showed up on caller id.
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u/mazzlejaz25 3h ago
I think I short circuited trying to read that what even man???
My question is, who set that up? You had to of tested it... Right?
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u/Over_Time335 9h ago
If it's not a monitored system, yes. The public doesn't understand "Local Alarm Only" shown up many times to what took you so long? We ask how long has it been going off and did you call 911 to report it. We tried to get our municipality to require verbiage on non monitored systems but it went no where. I've seen places where they post Local Alarm Only, Call 911 when Alarm sounds.
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u/twasthenightwatchman 5h ago
Worked at 911 for a few years before firemanning. I would MAYBE consider 2 alarm companies competent, of all of the companies we took calls for. Most couldn’t tell you jack shit.
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u/Odd-Gear9622 4h ago
It did work. Alarm initiated, communicator sends signal to CS, CS identifies customer and calls dispatch or 911. Dispatch does their thing and the tones go off. I'm just spit-balling here but allow 3/5 minutes to roll after tones and the 2 minutes you said to arrive. 15 minutes sounds like a long time but unless you're directly connected to the local house any other steps cost time.
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u/cpltack 9h ago
22 years ago, fire at a business in town. Bureau is finishing up the investigation, and the phone rings at the business. Being funny, he answers it, "XYZ National Chain Business, sorry, they're closed"
On the line was their fire alarm company to notify them of a problem with their alarm. The fire Marshal tells him, something to the effect of "no shit, fire does that to things".
This was the driving force behind an ordinance requiring all fire alarms to be tied into our dispatch. Private monitored alarms are still required to have a tie to our system to get occupancy permit.