A Plague Of False Fire Alarms

SINCE 1997, automatic fire-alarm calls - not 911 calls - have become the most common summons for Seattle firefighters. During the past six years, they've rushed to an average of 20 such calls a day, and 99 percent of the time, they've found no fire to fight.

When a call comes in from the Grosvenor House apartment building, firefighters at Station 2 in Belltown usually know what they'll find: nothing.

The building at 500 Wall St. has one of the most overactive automatic fire-alarm (AFA) systems in the city. Firefighters made more than 200 visits there during the past two years, records indicate, but only once did they find a fire.

The pattern is the same at the Morrison Hotel at 509 Third Ave., which is run by the Seattle Housing Authority - 121 calls, one fire.

The records reflect a citywide trend: Seattle firefighters are seeing fewer fires than ever but are responding to more alarms.

An analysis of dispatch logs indicates AFA calls increased 22 percent from 1992 to 1998. They now make up more than half of Seattle's fire calls, but fewer than 1 percent turn out to be fires.

More than 6,000 fire-alarm systems are installed in schools, hospitals, high-rise downtown buildings and apartments, said Assistant Fire Marshal John Nelsen. A growing number are even being put into homes.

The problem is, many AFA systems are overly sensitive and can be falsely triggered by dust, cigarette smoke, cooking or shower steam.

Last year, 77 percent of the 8,500 AFA calls were false alarms, and another 22 percent were triggered by smoke, steam, heat or a water problem. Each time, the Fire Department was required to send at least one engine and four to eight firefighters.

"Quite frankly, it's wearing our people out," Nelsen said.

While fire officials say false alarms don't come at an added cost to taxpayers, all the extra runs do present other problems. False AFAs stretch Fire Department resources thin and could delay firefighters in responding to real fires, some experts say.

"That's the real problem," said J. Gordon Routley, an Arlington, Va.-based fire-department management consultant. "You could have the three or four closest units chasing alarms and then you can't respond to the real emergencies."

Some firefighters say the false alarms can make them complacent.

Fire officials warn that the risk of a traffic accident increases every time a fire truck rushes down the street.

"Almost every fire department I know of is having this problem" with AFAs, Routley said. "You have to respond and you want to respond. It's really tough to know what to send."

Dozens of cities around the country are taking steps to clamp down on the problem. They inspect AFA systems more frequently, issue fines for excessive calls and, in some cases, verify the existence of a fire before sending a full complement of firefighters to a scene.

But in Seattle, little has been done, and fire officials are just getting around to investigating why there are so many false AFAs.

Seattle has received about 44,000 AFA calls in the past six years - an average of 20 a day.

Fire calls make up a little more than 20 percent of all calls to the Fire Department. The rest are for medical emergencies.

At Station 10, at 301 Second Ave. S., firefighters respond to an average of seven or eight AFAs a day. They accept the calls as a routine part of their jobs, but they also joke about it.

For some firefighters, AFAs at the Morrison Hotel are called "automatic false alarms."

At Station 2, at 2334 Fourth Ave., Capt. Peter Aoki was one of the several firefighters who worked a standard 24-hour shift last Dec. 19 and 20, which turned out to be the busiest two-day stretch in department history. During that period, the station responded to 69 AFA calls.

Aoki said some firefighters get so used to responding to a building with a history of false AFAs that they break regulations and don't immediately put on their headgear.

That doesn't surprise Mike Milam, president of Seattle Firefighter's Union Local 27.

"It becomes an accepted part of the job," Milam said. "Certainly, if you go to a building 20 times in a row and you see 20 false alarms, you're going to expect that the 21st time is going to be the same. That's the problem."

That kind of thinking can be dangerous, said Station 10 Lt. Ed Peterson.

"We don't want to be in that position where we go to some place that has a history of false alarms and then think, `Oh, someone's cooking again, or someone's smoking,' when in actuality, there's someone trapped in a room that's on fire," he said.

AFA systems look and work essentially like smoke detectors. But while smoke detectors sound only localized alarms, AFAs are usually connected to a building or home's control panel, which automatically alerts a private alarm company.

The alarm companies - some outside of Washington state - contact the city's Fire Alarm Center at Station 2. Dispatchers there summon firefighters.

What triggers false AFAs?

Cold weather, or rather the heat that's turned on during cold weather, may be one factor. That would explain the number of calls last Dec. 19 and 20, during the winter season's first cold snap.

Bellevue's Fire Department also reported 28 AFAs in a 24-hour period during that freezing week - more than double the typical number.

"When the really cold weather hits, the smoke detectors go crazy," Peterson said.

Aging fire-alarm systems also may be part of the problem, as some of the buildings with the highest number of AFA calls have some of the older alarm systems. At the Morrison Hotel, which generated Seattle's third-most AFA calls in the last two years, the AFA system is about 15 years old, said former building manager Jerry Kosierowski.

That, combined with the fact that the 100-year-old building has poor ventilation and a large number of AFA detectors - one in every room and one every 15 feet on each floor's 8-foot ceilings - makes false AFAs more likely.

It's the same story at the Jefferson Terrace apartments at 800 Jefferson St., also run by the Housing Authority and formerly by Kosierowski. "At the Morrison and Jefferson Terrace, they have good coverage with smoke detectors, so when people cook in there and don't keep tabs on it, they set off the smoke detector. The kitchens there also don't vent very well," Peterson said.

Arnold Payne, general manager of the 18-story Grosvenor House, said the AFA system is extremely sensitive, reacting even to shower steam and smoke from burnt toast.

"It's not only a hassle for them (firefighters), it's a hassle for us," Payne said. "Every time the alarm goes off, all the elevators go down to the first floor."

Jim Fry, who works for A1 Fire Equipment, the Burien company that maintains the 15-year-old AFA system at the Grosvenor House, said it's the placement of the alarms, not their age, that's the problem.

Each alarm in the building's 320 rooms is attached to a 9-foot ceiling, Fry said. Generally, the lower the ceiling, the more likely it is that an alarm will be triggered. Fry said he is trying to update the system.

Nelsen, the assistant fire marshal, said he asked in February that the building replace the smoke-detecting AFAs with ones that detect heat. Each room should also have a battery-operated smoke detector that alerts only the occupants of the room, he said.

Nelsen said many buildings with overactive alarms have already begun to update their alarm systems.

One solution, according to Nelsen and Fire Marshal Gregory Dean, would be to program newer AFAs to retest the air a second time once an alarm has been activated. They aren't sure, though, how many buildings have programmable AFAs.

Nelsen also said that since many AFAs are tripped by dust during the construction of new buildings, the Fire Department is now also asking alarm contractors not to connect their systems until after the building is complete.

Another solution would be to educate people about how AFAs are triggered and ask them to be more careful with cigarettes and food on the stove, since those are the most common ways an AFA is tripped, Kosierwoski and fire officials said.

Theodore Hartman, 63, has lived at the Morrison Hotel for about two years. He learned his lesson when he triggered an AFA while cooking a pot of beans last year.

Hartman said he left his apartment for just a minute when the smoke from his beans set off an AFA.

"When I got back, the Fire Department was already there," he said.

The cost? It's debatable

Just how much do these false calls cost local taxpayers?

For 1998, the estimates run from just over $100,000 to $400,000.

As an AFA call typically puts one engine and one ladder truck into service, the cost for fuel and maintenance amounts to about $19 per run, according to Eyvind Westby, finance director at the Fire Department.

An AFA call also typically puts about eight firefighters in service for about 15 minutes. So if you add the salary of the firefighters - an average of $23 per hour - that brings the total to $65 per run.

With 6,200 false AFAs recorded last year, that amounts to $117,800 without the labor costs, and $403,000 with them.

But Austin, Texas, which has a department similar in size to Seattle's, calculates the average cost of running on each fire call is $1,031, which includes the cost of salaries for three firefighters and maintenance and fuel for one engine, said Justin Meyer, Austin Fire Department financial manager.

Using the Austin estimate, the cost for Seattle would be closer to $6.3 million for last year.

Fire officials, however, are quick to point out that running on AFAs, false or not, is a wash - since the fire engines and ladder trucks used on the runs would have been in service and the firefighters would have been on duty anyway.

"It's not an added cost to the city," Westby said. "Whether we are we going on false alarms or not, it's going to cost us the same."

The city first attempted to address the AFA problem last year, when firefighters were instructed to fill out a "Notice of Fire Alarm" after each AFA run where "no emergency is found."

The idea was to document trends in an effort to minimize false alarms, according to Fire Chiefs Steven Brown and Donald Taylor.

But some firefighters considered the forms a waste of time. And some lieutenants at some stations admit they never filled out the form.

Dean acknowledges the program wasn't as successful as he had hoped, and no one really kept track of it.

The plan has been scrapped for now, but the department is hoping to craft a new form soon.

No fines for false alarms

Another tool the department has used, according to Peterson and Lt. Richard Castro at Station 10, was issuing a "notice of violation," which warns building managers they've had excessive false AFAs. The notices request but don't require building managers to fix the problem.

And there is no standard for issuing the notices. In 1997, the Morrison Hotel had 57 false alarms, but Station 10 - which usually responds to that address - issued it only five violation notices. During the same time, the Jefferson Terrace had 35 false alarms but wasn't given a single violation notice, according to Castro.

In the 1994 Seattle Fire Code, fire officials did have authority to issue fines to building owners, tenants, or even alarm-monitoring agencies for excessive AFAs. Such fines would have been $50 for the second and subsequent false alarms in a 12-month period.

But fines were never levied. Nelsen said fining offenders would have caused an administrative nightmare; since it had never been done, he wouldn't have known where to start.

The current Seattle Fire Code - updated every three years - doesn't include the right to levy a fine, Nelsen said.

Department needs data

Dean, who became the department's fire marshal in May 1998, said the first thing the department needs to do is get a handle on the AFAs by creating and studying a database and seeing for itself how widespread the problem is.

Other cities are already working on solutions.

Several communities, for example, have instituted fines. Some are graduated: the more false alarms generated, the higher the penalty.

In Manhattan, the New York Fire Department now sends just one truck rather than four in response to AFA calls. Only after an independent verification that there's a fire - another alarm, another phone call, or a report that the truck crew sees fire - are more trucks dispatched.

Safety has also been a concern. In several cities, including Seattle, people have been killed or hurt in accidents involving firetrucks rushing to false alarms.

For example, in November 1988, two cars collided with a Fire Department ladder truck that was on an emergency run in downtown Seattle. The ladder truck was en route to Swedish Medical Center, where the alarm, it turned out, was set off by a system malfunction, not a fire.

For about a year, the St. Louis Fire Department has been responding to AFA calls without lights or sirens.

"It's really hard to explain how you got into a serious accident responding to an automatic alarm that has a 99 percent chance of not being serious," said Routley, the Virginia-based consultant.

Local fire officials agree.

"Certainly, when you have the red lights and sirens going, you have a hazard," said Milam, president of Seattle's Firefighters union. "But you have to make it an acceptably low hazard. The drivers have to be well-trained and always need to be cautious about getting there, but overall, it would be better if we could just reduce the number of false alarms."

Firefighters say they have no choice but to respond to all fire alarms. Milam, who has been with the Fire Department for 19 years, agrees.

"I'm glad that automatic fire alarms exist, because if we didn't have them, we'd have a lot more fatalities and burned-down businesses. False alarms are just part of the bad that comes with the good."

Seattle Times research editor Tom Boyer contributed to this report.

Arthur Santana's phone-message number is 206-515-5684. His e-mail address is: asantana@seattletimes.com