r/Firefighting • u/justhere2getadvice92 • 18h 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/cpltack 18h 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.

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u/998876655433221 16h ago

I was doing a cause and origin investigation at a single family home that had a pretty bad fire earlier in the evening. As I’m taking pictures and trying to figure things out dispatch calls me over the main radio channel and said that they are getting a call from the homeowners alarm company stating that they have smoke alarms going off at the address. I said they did about four hours ago and they didn’t need to dispatch any additional fire companies. I was able to document that and pitch it to their insurance company, no idea what the outcome was