40% of Incident Alarms in Indian River are Fire Alarms Sounding Incidents….

The Indian River Volunteer Fire Company offers this publication to highlight an operational issue with respect to fire alarm or automatic fire alarm sounding incidents.

In Calendar 2024, 40 percent of the incident dispatches were for automatic fire alarms or fire alarm sounding incidents within a residential or commercial structure.  Many of these activations were due to operator error, malfunction, system design, unintentional or other rationale.

Every unwanted fire alarm is costly, disrupting schools and businesses, placing unnecessary strain on our emergency services, and reducing the public’s faith in fire alarms.  An unwanted fire alarm is: any fire alarm signal other than a genuine fire or signal test. The cause of these unwanted fire alarms can be attributed to human behavior - either good intent or malicious, or due to equipment.

• ‘Good intent’ are calls made in good faith with the belief that there really is a fire.

• ‘Malicious’ activations are made with the intention of getting the fire and rescue service to attend a non-existent incident.

• ‘Due to equipment’ activations are incidents initiated by a fire alarm and firefighting equipment activating, such as culinary mishap.

Continuing to be the largest incident type, automatic fire alarms accounted for 40 percent of the incidents attended by the Indian River Volunteer Fire Company within our immediate fire district for Calendar Year 2024 while actual fires accounted for 21 percent and vehicle accidents accounted for 27 percent.

Illustrated herewith are some recommendations for creating action plans to reduce the chance of any unwanted fire alarm activations.

• Check detector types and their locations – would moving detectors or changing the type used reduce activations? Seek advice from your alarm engineer if necessary.

• Upgrading automatic fire detection (AFD) systems that are obsolete with more modern technology e.g. ‘multi-sensing’ detectors.

• Fitting manual call points with protective covers in problem, vulnerable or high traffic areas.

• Ascertaining whether any false alarms are a result of activating the wrong call points.

• Keeping automatic fire detection (AFD) systems appropriately maintained.

• Considering whether a link to an Alarm Receiving Center is necessary or if it is appropriate to suspend the automatic dialing function whilst buildings are occupied or at certain times of the day.

• Seeking further guidance and advice from their alarm system provider or servicing agent.

Our hope is to increase awareness within our immediate fire district to mitigate the quantity of these unwanted fire alarm incidents