Gloucester's fire-alarm system woefully outdated - The Boston Globe
Boston Globe, Metro North, January 28, 2007.
Gloucester's fire-alarm system woefully outdated Aging wires being replaced with radio setup in many towns
By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff | January 28, 2007
The anxious caller phoned Gloucester's fire dispatch at 7:26 a.m. on Jan. 4. Fire alarms were sounding at Poplar Park, a senior housing complex in the center of town. But where, the caller asked, were the firefighters?
Poplar Park's alarm box was supposed to trip a signal in fire headquarters, but firefighters were unaware of trouble until that call. The alarm turned out to be minor -- a resident's overheated stove set off smoke detectors.
But the incident alerted responders to a significantly larger problem: The municipal alarm system connecting a huge swath of the city was down that day and no trouble lights or buzzers went off in headquarters, said firefighter/dispatcher Phil Bouchie, who was working that shift.
Senior housing, apartment complexes, schools, and private companies throughout Gloucester are wired to a century-old municipal fire-alarm system that is so deteriorated that it increasingly fails to notify dispatchers, firefighters say.
Residents often assume that when a fire alarm is tripped in a building, it sends a signal to the fire department. But in Gloucester, firefighters say, it is hardly a safe bet that the cavalry is coming.
Compounding the issue is that Gloucester's system also is sending out many false alarms, what firefighters call "stray blows."
"We will have one, or two, or three bangs on the fire-alarm system that don't correlate with anything," said Deputy Fire Chief Miles Schlichte.
"The problem is, when it's really rainy or windy, we get a lot of these stray blows, and they intermingle with legitimate codes."
As Gloucester struggles to maintain a system that is dependent on miles of aging wire strung along telephone poles and buried underground, other local communities are upgrading to a more modern and reliable wireless warning system that runs on radio frequencies. Topsfield Fire Chief Ronald Giovannacci, who is president of the Essex County Fire Chiefs Association, said about eight of the 34 departments in the association have already switched or are in the process.
Topsfield upgraded its system in May 2002. Saugus installed its central radio receiver last year and mandated that all businesses upgrade to the new wireless boxes by 2009. Beverly began its upgrade two years ago and today requires modern boxes on new construction and major expansions.
The city will require all public buildings to switch to the wireless boxes in a couple of years or pay for a private company to monitor their systems, said Beverly Fire Chief Richard Pierce.
Some communities, including Saugus and Beverly, worked out deals with private businesses who paid for the fire departments' new central radio receivers, which typically cost about $50,000 for the receiver and a back-up. Then building owners are required to buy a compatible fire-alarm box, which typically runs from $2,500 to $5,000, fire chiefs say.
But the challenges facing Gloucester's Fire Department extend far beyond its alarm system.
The city's fire chief, Barry McKay, said he still doesn't know if he will have enough money to keep all of Gloucester's fire stations open through June.
Two of the city's four stations, Magnolia and Bay View, were frequently closed after voters rejected a tax increase in 2004. Then a fatal fire last fall near a closed station sparked community outrage, and officials cobbled together funds to temporarily reopen the stations.
McKay said he submitted a request to Mayor John Bell last April to upgrade the city's fire-alarm system -- ranking it sixth on a list of 15 capital improvement requests -- but he is not optimistic.
"There has been little response because there are so many needs," McKay said.
Meanwhile, building owners are charged $275 a year for maintenance of their fire alarm boxes under a subcontract Gloucester has with Georgetown-based L.W. Bills Co., McKay said. The maintenance, McKay said, covers repairs but does not include routine upgrading of aging wiring, much of it more than a half-century old.
The alarm system is connected to a central control board in fire headquarters that was designed and wired decades ago by a firefighter who died about 20 years ago and who left no blueprints.
Bob Francis, 54, the lone firefighter who spent years learning the system from creator Albert "Albie" Grace, said he is now planning to retire in a few years and has not had a chance to diagram it or teach others how it works.
"It's hard enough for me to pick [problems] out, let alone train anyone else to do it," said Francis, who works on the system when he is not fighting fires.
The alarm section that failed Jan. 4 covers much of central Gloucester, an area that includes the O'Maley Middle School, the Seacoast Nursing & Rehabilition Center , and the Beeman Memorial School.
While the closing of city fire stations has received much public attention, firefighters say the crumbling communications system at headquarters is equally critical.
Just down the road from Gloucester, Beverly's fire chief points to last January's fire at the city's Folly Hill Apartment complex as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when communications fail.
The apartment building's fire alarms were sounding for at least 15 minutes on Jan. 22, 2006, before anyone thought to call 911, said Chief Richard Pierce.
The four-alarm fire destroyed six apartments, heavily damaged about 14 others, killed a dog, and displaced about 18 families, he said. It turned out that the building's fire alarm was not connected to Beverly's municipal alarm system, so firefighters were not notified until someone called 911.
"Since that fire, we pushed them to install these new radio boxes, and that's what they're in the process of doing," said Pierce.
Still, he continues to urge city residents to dial 911 when their buildings' fire alarms sound, just in case a fire-alarm box fails.
While the future of Gloucester's system is uncertain, it is still included as a central part of the city's Major Disaster Contingency Plan, written by the fire chief in 1999.
The plan directs residents to any of the city's fire-alarm boxes to summon police, firefighters, or ambulances if other communication systems fail. McKay said that part of the plan still stands.
"If you have no way to communicate in an emergency, if you know where there is a fire-alarm box, then theoretically, you can communicate with the boxes," McKay said. "But that's theoretical because we depend on [alarm] wires that could come down in an ice storm."
