SA Firefighter
General Discussion => SA Firefighter General => Topic started by: Ryan on November 04, 2006, 06:13:26 PM
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Now go forth and discuss the wonders of that false sometimes real alarm. :-)
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Tell me how a false alarm can be a real alarm. It cant happen.
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picky picky, I mean fire alarm. Most consider them false but they can turn out to be real, savvy?
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ok,lets look at why a smoke or thermal goes off, well it is due to the fact that the sensor has picked up something at the time but by the time the brigade arrives the problem is gone. So is it a false alarm? or did the unit do its job and send an alarm.... Did you know that most country hospitals have now banned the use of talcum powder for a number of reasons and one of these being that it would set smoke alarms off...Once again the unit did its job... Most fire alarms go of for a reason and hence a call out you arrive look for any sign of smoke and leave,but did you ask staff any questions? like what the room/area is used for,was spray or powder used,was the room being cleaned.... So all in all its not a false alarm but a human error its not the FIPS fault its human problem..
Now this week i could not believe what I was seeing,while doing some work at a clients the FIP went into alarm,local brigade turned out to the site in private cars and no fire appliances when I asked wheres the truck they said its always a false alarm!!!!!!! Hello Filtered....
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I know of a brigade that did that once. They had a private alarm one afternoon and it went off later that night again so a LT decided to go out in his car to just have a look and guess what the place was on fire this time. Who knows maybe it wasnt a false alarm earlier?
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Most false alarms we go to are people burning the dinner. therefore the alarm did it's job but it does get a little repeditive.
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Bill is correct, even by calling them false alarms in the title of this thread implies that all alarm calls we go to will be false. Lets get real people, these are fire alarms, they activate and alert you to the fact that there could be a fire, sure 90% of the time there is non fire related reason for them activating but until you go and investigate the area properly you cannot ever know.
Brigades rolling out 1 up or in a private vehicle to check them is just plain unacceptable (I won't mention the urban fringe group whose DGO goes out to most alarms in his Command Car to investigate). Bill you should be mentioning to the Regional Commander what you saw.
SOP 4.5 in the COSO's explains it all beautifully.
SA COUNTRY FIRE SERVICE – CHIEF OFFICER’S STANDING ORDERS & STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES
Automatic/Monitored Fire Alarms SOP 4.5
Aim:
To provide procedures for response to automatic fire alarms in CFS areas.
Scope:
Applies to Brigades responsible for responding to premises with automatic or monitored fire
alarms.
Procedure:
Call Receipt:
When a CFS Brigade is responded to an Automatic Fire Alarm that is monitored
by the Romtech concentrator located at State Headquarters:
A Brigade representative must confirm receipt of page with the State Operations Call
Centre within six minutes of receiving page
Acknowledgement of receipt of page can be confirmed via telephone or radio
If the SOCC operator does not receive any confirmation that the Brigade has
received the response within six (6) minutes of the message being sent, SOCC
will dispatch the designated default Brigade
Response Procedure:
If no fire is visible, the following procedure shall occur:
The first arriving appliance OIC shall attend the Fire Indicator Panel, determine the affected
circuit (either detection and/or suppression) and investigate
The second arriving appliance (if applicable) shall attend the hydrant booster cabinet or
closest water source
Crews donned in CABA will undertake investigation of the affected circuit. They should be
prepared to undertake offensive fire fighting and rescue if required
Any additional appliances shall be positioned or staged at the direction of the Incident
Controller.
Automatic Alarm Procedures:
The affected alarm circuit(s) which are operating must not be reset or
isolated until the Incident Controller has ensured that a thorough check
of the designated circuit is completed and the affected detector in the
alarm circuit has been identified or other such cause has been
determined
In the case of sprinkler system, the area affected shall be thoroughly
investigated prior to any action being taken at the sprinkler valve
box/room isolation.
Management Notification Procedure
The Incident Controller will ensure that the management of the premises is:
Notified of the alarm activation and the fire service action taken
Informed of their obligation to arrange for the fire alarm to be examined by a
suitable technician to ensure that the system is operating correctly
Where management of the premises or a person of authority is not in attendance, they
must be contacted as soon as possible to advise of CFS attendance and the above
obligations
The name and position of the person advised must be recorded on the CFS Alarm
Attendance Book.
November 2004 2 of 2 Standard Operating Procedure 4.5
SA COUNTRY FIRE SERVICE – CHIEF OFFICER’S STANDING ORDERS & STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES
Reset of Circuits
Attending crews shall ascertain the precise cause of the circuit(s) operating and initiate the
following process
Where the cause is known and the condition, which caused the activation, is no longer
present, the circuit(s) shall be reset
Where the cause of activation is undetermined (no apparent cause), the circuit(s) shall be
assumed to be faulty and should be left isolated
Where the cause of the activation is undetermined and the circuit will not reset, the circuit
shall be left isolated
Isolation of Circuits
If a condition causing the activation continues to exist, the circuit(s) shall be isolated.
Management may reset the circuit when the condition ceases.
Where the circuit is isolated, management of the premises must be notified that they are
without automatic fire alarm coverage to the affected areas/circuit(s) and that they must
phone contact the appropriate fire service directly for an emergency
Fire Alarm Log Book
All attendances and action taken when responding to Automatic Fire Alarms shall be
recorded in the “Fire Alarm Log Book” which is kept at the Fire Indicator Panel
All entries shall be accompanied by the Officer’s name in block letters and signature
The Officer attending the Fire Indicator Panel or sprinkler system shall also complete the
Fire Alarm Call Out Report Form, which may be found attached to the Fire Alarm Log
Book
Security
Where CFS held keys are used to gain entry into premises, the Incident Controller shall
ensure the premises are left secure and that all building services, if utilised, are
returned to normal operation
Brigades must ensure that any keys held by the brigade are maintained in a secure, locked
location, with the station or fire appliance. Keys are not to be readily accessible to any
persons entering the station.
Authorised by:
…………………………………..
Euan Ferguson
Chief Officer
SA Country Fire Service
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Hey cranky I love referring to our bible, but yes there are some GO's and DGO's that dont
I have actually witnessed them turning up in a vehicle and no appliance in sight. :evil:
General causes of alarms:
TOP 10 CAUSES
Burnt Toast
Flyspray in contact with head
Room deodoriser in contact with head
Steam in contact with head
Water in contact with head
Dust in contact with head
Workmen using disc cutters
Cleaners dusting
Plumbers welding
Non isoltaion of circuit prior to working on system..ie test
I just love asking what was being done at the time of activation,usually falls in to one of the above everytime. :-D
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You forgot spiders and staff hitting them to remove spider webs....
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Hey cranky I love referring to our bible, but yes there are some GO's and DGO's that dont
I have actually witnessed them turning up in a vehicle and no appliance in sight.
Well put what you saw in writing and pass it onto the Region. Breaching the SOP's / COSO's is not something that they can ignore and shouldn't be taken lightly, if a brigade is willing to break one rule how many others are they also breaking.
Take this seriously people, remember that the big Mitcham Shopping Centre fire initially came in as an automatic fire alarm, as have many of the other large stucture fires in this state.
Fire alarms need to be treated as a fire until proved otherwise - no exceptions.
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Hey that is true other wise ther is no point in having the alarm.
I do like it though when you rock up and then get asked 'is there a fire' :lol:
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How many times have we rolled to a job and arrived to the sound of evacuation alarms going and bells ringing,yet the staff etc are still doing their daily thing...ie nursing homes :-o
One day it will all turn to S*#O
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went to a nursing home once and the small fire was out and all the patients were sitting in the next room having dinner, don't worry about the smoke.
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Thats bad,and that shows you that nursing homes,hospitals and shopping centres all need to have staff that are trained to help evacuate and know how to deal with the situation till the fire service arrives..
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On some of the older fire alarm panels there was a feature to be able to isolate the premises from the fire station.After attending continual false alarms the group brought in the policy of charging them $100 for each callout.
After a while they got the message and the false alarms stopped...but we found out why...they had isolated the system from our station.
A 000 call one day after an actual fire which we turned out to, found the FIP isolated. :-o
A report was made to Building Fire Safety and there were many red faces at the establishment
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When the new FIREMON system comes on line brigades will not be allowed to charge for call outs this will be done by SAFECOM who will get the money...
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We earned nearly couple grand in last couple months pity that will stop when we change over 8-).
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You missed "Alarm fault" in your list.. Most of ours seem to be an alarm fault... (Although now you mention it, anything could have set it off, the owners are just in denial :P)
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Telstra techs are good for crossing over the lines and bang off they go.....
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Lightning is another one
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Everyone in the Lakes Village Shopping Centre got a rude shock today cause around 11-11:30am the centre's fire alarms sounded I happened to be one of the fortunate ones who was doing shopping in Bilo/Coles when this happened and had to abandon my shopping trolley
However didnt go away empty handed cause I happened to have my trusty Nokia 6233 on hand with built in video camera while waiting for the Metro boys to arrive I stood on the footpath with my video camera in standby mode after catching site of them halfway up the road I activated the camera and filmed some footage of their approach :-D
Luckily it was only a False Alarm :roll:
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A week or more ago the fire alarms sounded in the large Wayville showground's pavillion. Unfortunately 1500 to 2000 students were 1.5 hours into their exams in that building.
The organisers waited 5 minutes before evacuating everyone. This was a flase alarm.
Friends of mine then had to resit the exam paper on the next Saturday.
All of the 1.5 hours of exam time was thrown away.
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Maybe it was a Schoolies prank :-P
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Everyone in the Lakes Village Shopping Centre got a rude shock today cause around 11-11:30am the centre's fire alarms sounded I happened to be one of the fortunate ones who was doing shopping in Bilo/Coles when this happened and had to abandon my shopping trolley
However didnt go away empty handed cause I happened to have my trusty Nokia 6233 on hand with built in video camera while waiting for the Metro boys to arrive I stood on the footpath with my video camera in standby mode after catching site of them halfway up the road I activated the camera and filmed some footage of their approach :-D
Luckily it was only a False Alarm :roll:
No Robert it wasnt a False Alarm. It just happened to be the fire self extinguished before the firies arrived. The chicken cooker in BILO caught alight!
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I was not far from the deli department mind you the bilo staff didnt even know where the fire was thats why they focused on getting people out of Bilo but still video footage is video footage I just gotta get a blue tooth downloading cable so i can download the footage onto my computer :-D
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all coles/bilo stores its there policy to get all staff and customers out of the store when the alarm goes off,mind you I have a woolworths client that has now has 3 fires in the past month in there chook oven and staff have not called the fire service but put the fire out themself.Flames went up into the exhaust system...will change in a year when the store has a refit....
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I was not far from the deli department mind you the bilo staff didnt even know where the fire was thats why they focused on getting people out of Bilo but still video footage is video footage I just gotta get a blue tooth downloading cable so i can download the footage onto my computer :-D
filtered Smiths has software and cable for $29.95 Force USB Datasuite :-D
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The MFS responded after the FIP in Bilo/Coles activated and sent a alert to Adelaide Fire who paged Mount Gambier MFS :-)
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The MFS responded after the FIP in Bilo/Coles activated and sent a alert to Adelaide Fire who paged Mount Gambier MFS :-)
The Fire Alarm in the Lakes Village is hooked up to the MT Gambier MFS Station so they are directly paged when the fire alarm goes off.
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Only the pager messages (for MFS) that are pre-fixed by MFS: are despatched from MFS comms in Adelaide. The ones that start with Primary Alarm or Secondary Alarm are received by the Alarm Setup on the computers in the stations.
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Tell me do you guys still get tone 7 on your pager going off for the alarms seeing as there is no CFSRES or URGMSG on it??
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Only the alarms that we dual respond with CFS to are set up to say CFSRES on the end to go off as tone 7. So I set my pager on tone 7 for all messages. We dont get many admin messages so its the price I pay to make sure the pager wakes me up at night.
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Last week during that lightning storm on tuesday my pager went off with tone 7 after the first fires were reported outside the DOO even though i've got it on melody 1
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AS discussed in various other threads on this forum, and others, Tone 7 will override all other settings, except vibrate / silent, if the string CFSRES or URGMSG is contained in the message..
Pip
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I reckon we should change it so messages from MFS comms say *MFSRES:
Just kidding lol
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Well to me it seems a bit weird "cfsres" was used. why not just "urgmes" or just "res"
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why not persoalise it so it says
*atholres :roll:
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CFSRES was originally set up for the CFS pagers, but the other emergency services thought it was a good idea an adopted it later into the piece...
I believe when it was being designed, they were looking for a string of at least 6 characters that wouldn't appear normally in messages...
I'm fairly certain that the pagers could be programmed to trip to Tone 7 for any string of characters, but all pagers would require reprogramming...
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Well to me it seems a bit weird "cfsres" was used. why not just "urgmes" or just "res"
probly because neiother of those series of letters would trigger tone 7
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And the problem with just having "res" as tripping Tone 7 is that it will trip for every message that contains those letters in that order - including messages along of the lines of "For info, Brigade 24 responding to Grass Fire" or "Due to minimal crew in area, please make every effort to respond to incident today"
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It is pretty tempting when sending out a page for appliance re-commissioning etc. to get link to put CFSRES at the end to catch out any of the people who don't read their pagers. :lol:
Mind you link would probably misspell it anyway. :roll:
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We heard you talk about it Rob now do some affirmative action...GET ONE TODAY!! :-D
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I reckon we should change it so messages from MFS comms say *MFSRES:
Just kidding lol
Thas not a bad idea ath as that way we can tell its from MFS
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Er we already can as it starts MFS:RESPOND Domestic Fire etc :-D
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I reckon we should change it so messages from MFS comms say *MFSRES:
Just kidding lol
Thas not a bad idea ath as that way we can tell its from MFS
apparently information in other threads that has been repeated time and time again has failed to stick rob...
perhaps re-read a couple around the place about paging, stn numbers, etc, perhaps even the FAQs...
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Just for you Rob *CFSRES: causes all pagers to operate on response Tone 7.
A message containing *URGMSG: activates station sirens and/or opens the doors for you :-D
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SAFirey - might help if we only post accurate information.
both URGMSG and CFSRES will set off tone 7, and MAY activate sirens and doors IF this has been set up for your brigade
it all depends on the set up
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All right getting off topic here, back to the Fire Alarms.
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hmm what are we meant to be sayign about them?
ive been to scheiße loads, mostly false alarms, and a few real jobs.
good fun
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SAFirey - might help if we only post accurate information.
both URGMSG and CFSRES will set off tone 7, and MAY activate sirens and doors IF this has been set up for your brigade
it all depends on the set up
That is what I was trying to get across,being a combination of the two :-D
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hmm what are we meant to be sayign about them?
ive been to filtered loads, mostly false alarms, and a few real jobs.
good fun
Whatever ya wanna say about them, just keep it on topic andf not go on about pager messages, starty a new thread for that.
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Dont think we need to start a new one there are already a couple on that topic...NEEEEEXXXXXXXTTTT
Fixed alarm call the other day steam in contact with head.Dont cleaners get taught anything :evil: