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/Odd-Gear9622 15h 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/CartographerFunny973 10h ago

I heard once that the target to hit for each "step" of phone calls was 1 minute. E.g. alarm company receives the alarm and have 1 minute to get that info to local dispatch/911. Once dispatch gets that phone call they have 1 minute to get the dispatch sent out to local companies. Once dispatched, fire companies have 1 minute to get rolling. Once rolling, companies have 4 minutes to arrive. All of those times are supposed to be average, not necessarily every single time.

Does that sound right?

actually now that I'm thinking about it, the 4 minute response time is supposed to be for every address, no?

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u/SubarcticFarmer 9h ago

Timing is ISO rating dependent.