Fines For Failure To Operate

Hi all, I can’t discuss this in too great detail because of the privacy implications but I was wondering what the usual process of investigation is when a fire alarm system fails to operate in an emergency.

Last month, during event setup for a major production at my school a small fire broke out on some lighting equipment hanging up in the air. (This was the one class period I wasn’t there that afternoon too). Another student noticed it first, tried to get everyone to evacuate the room but they thought he was joking, but one teacher checked on what he was talking about to be safe still. They then proceed to evacuate that wing of the building and pull one pull. Nothing happened so they tried another, which also didn’t work, they then tried a third one before deciding to just evacuate the general area and hope the fire department came.

Thankfully, the person at the lighting console hit the blackout button to cut power to the rail, which caused the fire to self extinguish after the cable burned up.
The fire department did receive a 3 alarm fire, but the school did not evacuate because the NAC disable button was accidentally left active. The tech who came out to investigate said that he thinks it may of been because of some ongoing construction.

I believe they let the school off on this one because it was handled quite well within the small group of people present at the time and was a pretty simple mistake, but what would be the normal course of action if this were to happen in a commercial facility?

Whoever left the signals disabled should be very strongly reprimanded, maybe even fired - and should be held personally liable for damages.

If the building has a public address system, a manual evacuation announcement could be made as a makeshift.

Incidents like this are why I like the prominent “PARTIAL SYSTEM DISABLE” light on Siemens/Cerberus Pyrotronics panels… it helps prevent someone from leaving the system disabled.

[quote=randomperson post_id=86633 time=1585326335 user_id=3878]

Whoever left the signals disabled should be very strongly reprimanded, maybe even fired - and should be held personally liable for damages.

If the building has a public address system, a manual evacuation announcement could be made as a makeshift.

Incidents like this are why I like the prominent “PARTIAL SYSTEM DISABLE” light on Siemens/Cerberus Pyrotronics panels… it helps prevent someone from leaving the system disabled.

[/quote]

As far as I know, no one knows for how long the NACs were disabled or who disabled them in the first place, we just know it had to be after a fire drill that happened 2 weeks before. Thankfully damages were cut to just a power cable because of someones quick thinking with cutting the power. They now put a large sticker next to the button explaining that it should only be used for testing.

This is a massive 5+ panel EST 3 network installed in the early 2000s that was taken over by Siemens about 5 months ago, who are obviously not an EST dealer, so they don’t have the ability to remove the button from the surface or require login to use it. Unfortunately, the previous company was asleep at the wheel and said it was fine that an entire loop would go into trouble from time to time so everyone is used to just ignoring the panel’s beeping so I don’t know how much Siemens’s solution would help.

[quote=FireAlarmTech9 post_id=86634 time=1585327281 user_id=3576]

I don’t know how much Siemens’s solution would help.

[/quote]

I was pointing out how some panels have a prominent indication when anything is disabled… Siemens was the first one that came to mind.

Every manufacturer should have a Disable light… I think EST also does (on the same row as the Power light) but it’s much less noticeable. (and if the panel is frequently in trouble, it could go unnoticed.)

If I designed a panel with a disable feature in mind, It would include a system trouble letting you know that the NACs have even disabled. I would also add that if somebody pulled the alarm, the panel would automatically enable the NACs, and go into alarm.

There should’ve been a phone call from the monitoring everyday day for a periodic test with trouble. Panel should’ve annunciated a trouble sound every 24 hours.

1 Like
[quote=JRs post_id=86640 time=1585348247 user_id=4544]

There should’ve been a phone call from the monitoring everyday day for a periodic test with trouble. Panel should’ve annunciated a trouble sound every 24 hours.

[/quote]

I think Active Status Reminder was enabled, but I’m not sure if anyone ever actually investigated the trouble condition. I know the panel would start beeping almost every day around 7pm or so, but since the annunciator that’s student accessible is in an area that’s under construction so I could never actually look at what was causing it.

I’d certainly like to talk to school administration about what went wrong in my view, but since everything was so busy with a musical happening right after this happened and now NJ says people wont be going back to school until April 17th at the earliest I am not quite sure if that will actually happen for awhile.

Was there ongoing construction going on during that day? Usually when we disable a system, there should be someone doing a fire watch every hour, especially if no one is present at the panel. In my Province they have been cracking down on this stuff. I know 2 Toronto companies were charged for failing to maintain and test a few high rise buildings down there (mind you these are roughly 70 to 90 story towers). & Fines start around $100 Grand for companies & $50 Grand for the techs.