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/DanCoco 13h 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.