Fire Alarms: What a Nuisance!

  • Published
  • By Jesse D. Marshall
  • 2nd Civil Engineer Squadron
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. --  Every day, Barksdale Air Force Base's Fire Emergency Services responds to numerous fire alarm activations.

Automatically, most firefighters react with a sense of frustration when these alarms occur. Terms such as, "Automatic False Alarm", and "Great, another bicycle run" are often used to describe the annoyance.

Fire department responses are often reduced to single engine responses to occupancies with multiple alarms occurring within a shift or a specific time period. Resulting from the rising number of false calls, recurring responses for the fire department often lead to complacency and apathy when responding to the occupancy. These conditions can lead to firefighter injuries, deaths and additional fire losses due to the extended time between arrival and the initiation of fire suppression operations.

This is not only a local problem. According to the most recent study published by the National Fire Protection Association, in 2003, fire departments across the nation responded to 2,189,500 false alarms, excluding good intent and smoke scare calls. Thirty-six percent of the nuisance calls were due to system malfunctions, and 35 percent of false alarms were unintentional calls, in which smoke/heat detectors operated as designed. Lately, Barksdale's nuisance culprit has been the heat detector.

Recently, FES has been plagued with nuisance alarms stemming from rate-of-rise heat detectors falsely activating in aircraft hangars. The cause for these activations is mainly because of cold weather and the occupants opening and closing the hangar doors.

Rate-of-rise heat detectors activate when there is a surge in temperature, usually fifteen degrees per minute. So, when the hangar doors are opened, cold air is let in reducing the temperature in the bays. When the doors are then shut, the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning system increases the temperature in the facility causing the heat detectors to falsely initiate.

Building managers and occupants are encouraged to take proactive measures, such as slowly closing hangar doors which will allow the HVAC systems to slowly heat the facilities, in order to prevent further occurrences.

Heat detectors are installed in buildings to promptly detect the presence of fire, alert building occupants in a timely manner to evacuate the premises, initiate protective devices and notify the fire department to respond to the emergency. Fire departments responding during fire alarm activations involve multiple apparatus with numerous personnel aboard. Unnecessary responses due to false alarms needlessly cost the Air Force money and endanger fire department personnel and the general public. Measures taken to reduce or eliminate false alarms are essential to accomplish the fire department's mission to "save lives and conserve property".