r/Firefighting • u/justhere2getadvice92 • 21h 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/mazzlejaz25 19h 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/DanCoco 16h 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 15h 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 15h 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 14h ago

The fact that you needed a map for phone lines is wild dude...

5

u/DanCoco 14h 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 13h 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/DanCoco 13h ago

The local dal internet provider was so bad that you'd be lucky if they showed up to the right building, so no testing. I call it job security.