Property owners beware: if a contractor or service technician trips a fire alarm on your property, you’ll see a bill coming your way from the Town.
Fire Chief Steve Hernen was before Councillors at the last General Committee meeting (March 30) to explain why his department will now be strictly enforcing the Town’s bylaw regarding preventable false alarms.
“Many buildings require alarm systems by the insurance companies – that includes businesses and larger homes and cottages,” he said. “We had 102 calls in 2015 and 26 of those were directly preventable. They have a direct cost to the municipality – those 26 calls we went to last year cost roughly $30,000. It’s a substantial cost.”
Hernen said that these are calls where someone in the building has taken action carelessly which resulted in an alarm – an alarm technician working on the system who doesn’t put in a bypass, or contractors working inside buildings with chainsaws and power equipment that set off the alarm, for example. He said that the department has taken steps in the past to educate businesses and residents about the issue.
Even if a property owner, tenant or alarm monitoring company believes that an incident is a false alarm, once notified the fire department is still required to go to the scene to determine the cause of the alarm.
They’re working on them and not paying attention and they’re tripping alarms. Suddenly we pull up with two or three trucks. Well, congratulations, we’ll be passing the cost along to the individual and hopefully we can educate them that way.
Fire Chief Steve Hernen
He stressed that accidental calls are not part of this action. “If somebody has a cooking accident, that’s not a preventable alarm – the alarm system has done its job. If a child hits an alarm system because he falls, that’s not a preventable false alarm.”
There are two Town of Huntsville bylaws that deal with false alarms:
- False alarms due to failure to properly maintain fire alarm system or contractor/service repair person working on fire system – will be charged to the property owner $450.00 per truck and personnel/hour plus any additional cost to the Fire Department or the Town of Huntsville for each and every call
- Failure to notify Fire Department of testing/maintenance/drills of a fire alarm system – will be charged to the property owner $450.00 per truck and personnel/hour plus any additional cost to the Fire Department or the Town of Huntsville for each and every call
The report presented to Committee states that the fire department will now invoice the property owner as per the Fees and Charges By-law for preventable false alarm calls and any unpaid invoices will be added directly to the property tax roll for collection.
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Sandy you are 100 per cent correct in your thinking. The way the fire alarm systems are designed and built is there is an alarm test switch located in the system. When an alarm technician is working on the system, they are required to activate the switch which will stop the fire alarm system from notifying the fire department. The second option available to fire alarm system owners is exactly like you described, they simply call the alarm system monitoring company and ask them to put the system on by-pass until they have finished working on or testing the fire alarm system.
The cost of responding to these preventable alarms is only one issue we are trying to deal with. The major issue is in these buildings where we have had repeated false alarms and the occupants no longer respond to the fire alarm system when it rings. Just a few months ago this is what happened at a seniors’ residence in Toronto in the middle of the afternoon; by the time the residents realized the alarm was ringing for real it was too late for the 3 seniors who died trying to get out.
If you or anyone else has any question about this, I would be happy to discuss it. Please call the office 789-5201.
yup. we all have to keep paying for the fire department head …..i’d love to see that job description
I guess I’m thinking of another way to address the non-emergency alarm calls. Using the term ‘prevention’ (since it is used in fire prevention), perhaps a system similar to “Call Before You Dig” for underground cable location services would be the first step of preventing the unnecessary and very expensive alarm response. This would be offering a “Call Before You Alarm” service at a much reduced expense for the town or the business owner or contractor. Should they decide to ‘alarm’ without prior communication with the Fire Dept, then full on fees are levied.
Just a different approach to communicating the concern and endeavouring to lessen the frequency of unnecessary fire alarm calls and costs.
Paying for the Golden handshake club…