Comment by PaulDavisThe1st
20 hours ago
I'm a volunteer firefighter in rural NM. We have a commercial property close to us that repeatedly has false alarms on its fire alarm/smoke detection system, to the point where even the best of us are suffering from "the boy who cried wolf" feelings.
Because of this, I discovered that (apparently) NY Fire Department charges $5000 per false call on an alarm system directly connected to the dispatch system.
Somethng to think about.
ABQ Fire charges $300/call for false alarms after the first three. It steps up to $500 after number ten. There is, of course, also the $25 annual permit fee for a reporting alarm system. Failure to comply with these fees is a misdemeanor. Just in case some local precedent will help advocate :)
Honestly it's remarkable to me to think that anyone ever gets to that $500 "excessive" tier, I've had one false alarm where the fire department attended in years of having an alarm system and I was mortified. felt like the biggest idiot in the world.
$500 is probably cheaper than a Simplex service call.
Pretty common in lots of places - you get charged after n false-alarms and are required to fix your broken sensors or whatever is causing the issue.
Sometimes code gets in the way. E.g. in the school I went to growing up they had to have firealarms in all kind of closets and storage rooms. We got at least once per semester a firealarm when some teacher went in to sort stuff due to the dust.
There's generally two types of smoke alarms each with pros/cons: photoelectrical which are very susceptible to dust and ionizing which generally are not:
https://www.nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2023/03/0...
I wouldn't think code dictated the alarm type. (I just replaced all nine sensors in my home due to age and went with all photoelectric this time and it was less than six months before I had my first false alarm. Never had any false alarms with previous ionizing type.)
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A tradie doing some welding in the kitchen I was working in some years back told me this as he disabled the smoke alarm (to prevent a false alert while he was welding): "if you set off a false alert on the fire alarm, quickly set fire to the wastepaper bin - it saves you from paying the false alert fee"
I learned this from my last landlord after I kept causing issues for the whole building by cooking bacon. The detector was installed ABOVE THE STOVE. It was cheaper for him to move the detector than to pay for the repeat call outs over a mildly smoky apartment due to my need for crispy almost burnt bacon…
Consider investing in powerful window fans. If it's setting off a detector it's causing havoc in your lungs.
True, but do consider it is bacon, not exactly the healthiest of foods anyways.
Pretty sure that'll just drive people to turn it off. Or if they can't, try and set a small fire or something to get out of paying the fine
These are elegant solutions imo.
For example, my condo in Toronto charges $800 per false call.
I'm surprised the strata was able to offload that to you. Most building corps are in charge of maintaining the fire alarm system especially if it's a tower (rather than just a SFH community under a strata) where unit to unit spread needs to be addressed promptly.
It should probably be X$ per alarm regardless of it being false or not, minus first N per year.
Why? The goal is to incentivize property owners to fix broken systems not to pay for the actual cost of responding to a real call. That's covered by taxes.
> [...] not to pay for the actual cost of responding to a real call.
Not true for all places. There are places where the callee can be charged for the costs of a call and the owner of the building has to pay the firefighters (well, his mandatory government-issued insurance will pay). It's moving bills from one stack to another, but it's not free as in beer.
Depending on who is paying and how much, someone might light a small fire to avoid the fine.
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I'd interpret the "minus first N per year" to mean that you get a few "free" fires per year - but after that your habits filling your closets with oily rags, overloading electrical extension cords, and smoking in bed will start to cost you.
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That will also decrease the number of true positives