Posted By Ian P What is causing the false alarms to cause the FB to threaten you with enforcement action? Our alarms are permanently connected to a monitoring station who only call the FB after they have tried calling the location where the alarm has activated to check if it is a false alarm or not, if their is no answer they raise the alarm. Would your fire wardens not be checking the building anyway to make sure everybody has got out?

Posted By shaun mckeever This is a stance many fire authorities are taking in an effort to reduce the number of false alarm calls. As the use of automatic detection has become widespread so have the number of false alarms that the fire brigades have to attend. This means racing around the streets with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring. This is not without risk. Nor is it without cost. The latest version of BS 5839 requires a register of false alarms to be kept and once a certain threshold is reached the installers/maintainers are required to investigate the causes of the false alarms. Of course this doesn't help you much. Part of the fire brigades efforts to reduce the number of false alarms is to sit down with those that are having the problems discuss ways in which they can be reduced. Has this been done? If not give them a ring. They should be doing it before they send you these letters. Do you have a register of when the false alarms occur? Have you identified the causes? Is it something easily resolvable such as burning toast or is it something more technical that your maintainers can only deal with. One possible solution is to use a 'double knock' strategy depending on whether your system is suitable. This strategy is ideal in preventing unnecessary evacuations as well as preventing unwanted calls to the fire brigade. In essence it requires two heads to operate or a single manual operation (it is assumed that a person will not operate the break glass unless they have confirmed that it is a fire). Alternatively you could follow Merv's strategy but in addition I would also phone Merv every time you ring the fire brigade just to let him know that you have acted upon his advice ;0)

Posted By Merv Newman Shaun/Jim I'm with you both and I have once called my CEO at 4 am. He was not a happy bunny. But I am still on the "let it burn" side. I will not risk one person's life to save a million pound building. People before Property, before Production. Merv

Posted By Exdeeps Afternoon All, A little off topic, but, I recall a fire brigade being successfully sued about ten years ago because they either isolated a sprinkler system or did not isolate the sprinklers (Can't remember the details) and the end result was the destruction of a multi million pound computer centre (Next to the M3 in Hampshire). Fire brigade did not fight the fire but merely contained it, I think, because everyone was out. Can anyone shine some more light on this one? Jim

Posted By Barrie (Badger) Etter Adam, do you have fire marshals? they would / should confirm where the fire is and everyone is out. Plus if included in their training, they'll tackle it if small enough.

Posted By Barrie (Badger) Etter Our people have a dual role. Get people out and tackle paper bin size fires. A sort of reactive preventative action. React to the fire and prevent it getting out of control (if possible).

Posted By shaun mckeever I didn't word that very well. I'll rewrite it! They can't do both jobs reliably. If the fire marshal chooses to tackle the fire first before carrying out a sweep and the fire got out of control, the fire marshal is not going to then conduct a methodical sweep, he is going to leg it. If he chooses to carry out a sweep and then report to the senior fire marshal that the floor is clear he isn't then going to go back and tackle the fire. So you should either do one job or the other but not both. There you are, a bit better explained!

Posted By srd We use a combination of Fire Marshals and Floor Marshals. The Floor Marshals have the job of sweeping their designated part of the building and ensuring that all staff are evacuated before reporting to reception that they have done so. Fire Marshals, who have been trained, tackle small fires if it is save for them to do so. Stephen.

Posted By Adam Well thanks for all the help, we have fire wardens 2 per floor, however the training that they received said "clear the building" not "check where the fire is". We have a number of rooms with detector heads and no windows, so if you were to open a door could be a problem. Personally I dont like the idea of getting people to look for the fire, I would rather know that all were safe. We have had two false alarms this year and have had the alarm maintainer look at the system, they have not identified a faulty detector. I am considering asking the alarm monitoring company not to call the fire brigade unless two detectors in the same area are activated. Is this a reasonable step? I think so. The fire brigade, whilst I appreciate are possibly overloaded by false alarms are being a bit bull like by issuing my Director with a two page sheet that put fear into his mind, especially when he raed the words "Enforcement action". We will also be asking the insurere will the insurance cert still be valid by taking the new approach. Will let you know the outcome!! Thanks to all who replied!!

Posted By Ian P I have only had a few problems with fire alarms, usually burning toast and the worst we have had is a verbal warning from a fire officer that they will take "further action" if there are more false alarms. There have been more problems with false alarms from the intruder alarms and on a few occassions have had the response priority reduced by the police, do the FB operate a similar system?