Some Alarms on a Recent Trip:
I went on a short road trip this past weekend to Rapid City, South Dakota for someone’s wedding. We only went to four places that had fire alarm devices, but I took photos at all of them. One thing I did notice in Rapid City is that Siemens appears to have just as much (if not more) of a “monopoly” on the market than in my area.
Holiday Inn Express & Suites- Rapid City, SD (Rushmore South location):
This hotel was opened in 2019. It has 4 floors, and is a pretty typical Holiday Inn location. This hotel has a Siemens Cerberus PRO Compact system with Z-series notification appliances, and just one MSM-K pull station near the annunciator at the front desk (likely connected to a monitor module). For detection, they have Siemens mostly OP921 smoke detectorss, but the breakfast area has an HI921 heat detector, and the seating area directly outside of the breakfast area has an OOH941 multi-criteria smoke/heat detector (to avoid false alarms from cooking). Oddly, this hotel uses several Kidde residential hardwired CO detectors placed in key areas (such as the kitchen and pool area) for CO protection. As for the rooms, they have an equally odd setup. They have typical Kidde residential smoke alarms for local fire protection, but they actually used Gentex low frequency sounders for whatever reason. My only thought would be that maybe Siemens hadn’t yet released their LF sounders, but I have no idea how they are handling the synchronization (or if they are at all).
Here are some photos:
Walmart Supercenter (Stumer Road Location)- Rapid City, SD:
This Walmart location has a very new Bosch system with new System Sensor LED L-Series devices. Unfortunately, based on the fact that this Walmart was built in the early 2010, this system likely replaced a Wheelock SAFEPATH system. Other than the horn/strobes, the only components I saw were a few annunciators, and a pull station.
Here are some photos:
Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church- Rapid City, SD:
The main building of this church is very old, and has no fire protection whatsoever. The main entrance/ballroom was opened in 2024, and that has a Potter system. It has the typical rebranded Gentex notification appliances, but I didn’t see any smoke detectors or pull stations. The new area is sprinklered, though, and the system is also likely monitoring the kitchen hood Ansul system. There’s also likely a PAD300-PD or PC-2P smoke detector (depending on whether it’s an addressable or conventional system) above the panel.
Here are some photos:
In this next photo, you can see that there was supposed to be a wall mounted device, but the projector screen would have blocked it when it came down, so they changed to a ceiling mounted device. I’m glad they actually did all the right things in this case!
Culver’s (Mt. Rushmore Road Location)- Rapid City, SD:
This location has a pretty basic Siemens system from the mid 2010s. I didn’t see any components of the system at all, other than the notification appliances (not even an annunciator!). It is a modern sprinklered building, so I’m not too surprised, but I’m not sure why there was no annunciator. The notification appliances are Siemens ZH-MC-R horn/strobes, and ZR-MC-R remote strobes.
Here’s a photo I took:
