Collection of old articles did many years back

A BAD SITUATION COULD HAVE BEEN MADE WORSE

WHEN A FIRE ALARM WAS NOT RESTORED AFTER A FIRE?

Nick Markowitz Jr.

Member Emsworth VFD and

Private industry Fire Investigator

Recently one of my long time Fire Alarm customers suffered a 12:30 am   fire in building 90#of his group of apartment buildings90# 100# and 110# which are all under one common non fire braked roof he owns south of Pittsburgh Pa.

An electric Space heater a tenant was running on a top floor apartment over heated wiring and caused it rub against a wall stud which had metal lath running along it, resulting in a Arc Fault that failed to be cleared by a conventional breaker and the local fire dept had to respond and pull down the apartment ceiling and put out the fire, and turned off power to building 90#.

The local Fire system in the building went off and was silenced and the dept left after determining the fire was out. Not allowing any one to occupy building 90# till power was safely returned. I received an early morning call to restore power to the building and upon my arriving to start electrical repairs to the effected apartments to my horror I found that the fire dept had allowed tenants to stay in the attached buildings 100# and 110# with no fire protection working as they had silenced the alarm which feed all 3 building sections but had never reset it. 12 units of the 16 units building were occupied for over 9 hours with no fire protection. What if another fire had broken out or worse yet what if there had been a rekindle temperatures were below freezing and there easily could have another tragedy. The building should never have been left un protected .Had I been called early enough the system could have been isolated from 90# and continued to protect like I did to the system after I arrived or at the very least the fire dept should have left a fire watch in place with fireman or Apartment maintenance personnel till I arrived to isolate and fix the Fire system. Had there been another fire the fire chief could have faced serious criminal and civil problems over his negligence for not either making sure the system was working or a fire watch being in place. I can under stand his concern so many people with out a place to stay with as cold as it was but at the very least a fire watch would have been sufficient till the system was restored. As required by NFPA 72c

This is another case were poor training and lack of professionalism could have lead to another far worse tragedy. A fire system in a building should never be left silenced and not reset unless an appropriate Fire watch is in place. Especially In an occupied residential structure like an apartment building.