False Alarms-Illegal Burning Keeping Volunteer Fire Departments Busy

BALDWIN COUNTY Ala.
By: Rick McCann
Blue RAM Media LLC

On an average day in Baldwin County, volunteer fire departments are dispatched to a variety of calls including medical emergencies, car wrecks, and an increasing number of activated alarms that turn out not to be fires, but accidental activations.

And it’s not just the fire alarms that turn out to be false.

Now, local volunteer fire departments are being dispatched frequently to “Automatic Crash Notifications”, a function on some cellphones that is triggered when the phone has a hard impact and automatically calls 911 reporting a possible accident at the GPS coordinates that the phone has locked into its system.
Firefighters and ambulances and sometimes local police, are all dispatched to investigate whether or not a crash has occurred, and yes, sometimes, there is a real emergency. Sometimes responders do find a motor vehicle accident at the location but many times the phone has dropped off of a vehicle or has been tossed out of the vehicle’s window or dropped at a business. There’s no emergency.

New construction has also contributed to a noticeable increase in false fire alarms in Baldwin County including some businesses where alarms have gone off almost daily and sometimes even more than once on the same day.
In high-growth areas of the county, including Fairhope, Loxley, and Foley, fire departments have all experienced an increase in these types of activated fire alarms.

And there’s another type of fire alarm that is also adding to these increased call volumes.
The installation of monitored residential fire alarms.
Nationwide, security alarm businesses have added this feature to their “sales package” or have strongly recommended that this product be added to the home’s security plan.
Though smoke alarms became popular in the 1970’s, they have surged in popularity in the 90’s, and today, many homeowners consider them a necessity.
The difference between the average smoke alarm that most homes customarily install and those being installed today is that one is a “localized” alarm, meaning that it only sounds in the home, while the “monitored” system sends an alert to a central station that is monitoring the system and then they contact the local fire department.

Make no mistake, smoke alarms do save lives.

During one week in August, there were at least several dozen false fire alarms and five crash notification dispatches that turned out to be nothing more than lost or dropped phones.

Another source of increased calls during certain months is illegal burn complaints.

In Alabama, the burn ban for open burning is in effect for more than a dozen counties including Baldwin, from May 1 to October 31. This is an annual ban. It happens every year.
And every year, dozens of calls are received by the Baldwin County 911 communications center reporting that their neighbor or someone in their neighborhood, is burning debris, trash, or wood piles, sending plumes of smoke or sparks or both, into the air.
When such a complaint is received, the local fire department, paid or volunteer, is dispatched to investigate and inform the person about the burn ban, and the firefighters either extinguish the fire or ask the homeowner to put it out.
In some cases where there have been numerous complaints at the same address, the local police or the Baldwin County sheriff’s office may be dispatched and a citation could be issued.
Sometimes, it’s the person burning, who calls 911 reporting that their outside fire has gotten away from them and is spreading, even endangering structures, and asking for the fire department’s help.

Our staff contacted the fire marshal’s office and asked if local fire departments had to respond to every activated fire alarm and we were told that they “should”.

Some fire departments in Alabama and other states have different types of responses, for different types of activations.
A “High Life Hazard” alarm refers to a building that is known to have a high occupancy such as a school, hospital, or a hotel. With such a high risk of injuries or loss of life during a structure fire, alarms of this type receive a response that includes multiple engine companies, usually a ladder company, Battalion Chief, and sometimes a rescue truck or an ambulance.

Recently, this very thing occurred in Daphne when a fire alarm and a sprinkler system were both activated at a hotel. While en route to the call, firefighters were told that it was a structure fire. Additional equipment and manpower were also immediately dispatched.
The hotel was evacuated by management and the sprinkler did its job putting out the fire that was started by cooking inside in a room. There were no injuries, and only minor damage was reported.

Activated residential or commercial fire alarms known to have frequent false alarms may be responded to non-emergent (no lights and sirens) or they may have one fire engine running with lights and siren with a second engine trailing behind without their emergency equipment activated.

With Baldwin County’s strong growth and currently listed as one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, the workload for fire departments will continue to increase and as it stands today, that’s not a good thing for area fire departments
There are only a few Baldwin County areas that employ paid firefighters on duty at the fire station, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The rest of our fire departments are strictly staffed by volunteers who also work other jobs, often out of town and unable to respond to emergency calls, leaving some areas without immediate fire protection or response to medical calls.
Nearby departments do have mutual-aid response pacts and often cover each other’s emergency calls in these situations but that entails a slower response or no response at all. Sometimes several fire departments must be dispatched before one is available to respond.

Nationwide, around seventy percent of all fire departments are still staffed with either all volunteer firefighters or what’s known as a “combination” department, which employs a few paid firefighters mainly during day shift hours when volunteers are at work.

At this time, responses to activated fire alarms, crash notifications, illegal fires, and the occasional animal rescue, will no doubt, be part of the workload for local fire departments.

While some jurisdictions in other states have added fines when there have been repeated false fire alarms at the same location, and other agencies only respond when it is a “verified” activation either when a person calls 911 or through visual verifications such as security camera footage, there is no sure way to completely reduce dispatched calls to only real emergencies.

Fire services in Baldwin County will continue to change, evolve, grow, and meet the challenges, and the needs of this growing community.

Copyright 2024 Blue RAM Media. All rights reserved.