About 10 years ago, I was out at a family get-together and what I personally experienced was something that was so profound that it will certainly stay with me for the rest of my life, I hope that it has the same impact on you.
Simplified, it amplifies why I have focused on the criticality of life safety for more than four decades and it relates to what is likely to happen when a fire alarm system is properly designed, installed, inspected, tested, maintained and monitored and a fire emergency occurs or conversely, what the consequences are if the core fundamentals on a fire alarm system are not met.
Invariably, the professional and technical community of the alarm industry has consensus and recognizes that strictly adhering to NFPA 72 will help save lives and minimize property loss. Yet, there are still alarm systems that are being installed and/or that have been installed that do not meet the mandatory minimum requirements of NFPA 72.
Of course, there are a host of reasons why fire alarm systems will not provide early warning and/or will fail to alert all occupants in premises during a fire emergency. So, professionals know this is never an option nor is it something that they would ever knowingly accept when providing these mission critical services.
What Precautions Can Alarm Companies Take?
Indeed, whether the alarm company does not ensure that their employees are properly trained and supervised and/or is more interested in profitability than in ensuring compliance with NFPA 72, or just does not care, will certainly increase the propensity for serious personal injury and/or death to occupants in the premises, so the right fire alarm system can mean the difference between life and death.
At the same time, not everyone has experienced a fire where someone in their family was seriously injured and/or was killed in the fire, but for those of us that have one can only imagine how catastrophic that is. On the other end of the spectrum all fire alarm systems need to be inspected, tested, maintained and repaired in order to continue with the mission of life safety.
So it’s not just about the alarm contractor performing their duties; it is also about the subscribers responsibility of calling its alarm company if the system is in trouble and/or needs to be repaired.
The Tragic Consequences of Not Following Through
Against the foregoing backdrop, the impetus of this article surrounds a man who when he was a young boy lost both of his parents in a fire and, despite the home having a fire alarm system, this tragedy still happened and he was the only survivor.
More than 50 years later, it was this boy’s/man’s memory that caused him to seek me out and tell me about this part of his life that I never knew about and then he tried to get an answer from me about something that he had questioned ever since this tragedy happened.
He said that it took him this long before he felt comfortable enough to try to get an answer to a question that had haunted him for as long as he could remember. In other words, his question to me and my answer was in his mind going to give him finality one way or the other on the worst day of his life and no matter how long ago it was when that this happened it was time to reveal what had been terribly ingrained in his memory.
Quite frankly, I could feel the tension in his voice and his eyes did not seem to blink as he asked his question. He said, “before the fire, I remember there being a note on the refrigerator that the alarm company needed to be called to fix the alarm, but it never happened and I don’t know why. Jeff, do you think that my parents would have escaped and survived the fire had the alarm system been fixed by the alarm company beforehand?”
I am not sure if my answer to his question helped nor do I know if it was what he was expecting and I certainly didn’t know who it was that was supposed to schedule service for the alarm system but he didn’t know much about what part(s) of the alarm system were working, what part(s) of the alarm system were not working or any other particulars about the alarm system.
He also did not know what caused his mother to write this note on the refrigerator — to remember to call the alarm company — but we all know that there had to be some indication coming from the system. Unfortunately, I had to tell him that I did not know if it would have made any difference.
Let’s make sure that we all continue our focus of strictly adhering to or exceeding NFPA 72 standards because the difference between a fire alarm system that provides for early warning, or not, can be a matter of life and death.
