five_alarm
09-05-2003, 11:04 AM
The City of Ottawa is right to be concerned about the rising number of false alarms to which firefighters must respond, but it's not clear that its proposed solution -- levying fines on repeat offenders -- is the solution to the problem.
As the Citizen reported yesterday, out of 35,856 calls received by the fire department last year, 7,671 were false alarms, compared with only 3,275 actual fires. And of those false alarms, more than half were due to alarm equipment failure or accidental activation during inspection or repair of the system. Only 13 per cent were deliberate.
Source: The Ottawa Citizen... (http://www.firehall.com/cgi-bin/refer?url=http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=d60a1303-47bc-4bdf-a6f4-383bf027727f&s=9641409.95211018&linkid=178&parent=news)
As the Citizen reported yesterday, out of 35,856 calls received by the fire department last year, 7,671 were false alarms, compared with only 3,275 actual fires. And of those false alarms, more than half were due to alarm equipment failure or accidental activation during inspection or repair of the system. Only 13 per cent were deliberate.
Source: The Ottawa Citizen... (http://www.firehall.com/cgi-bin/refer?url=http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=d60a1303-47bc-4bdf-a6f4-383bf027727f&s=9641409.95211018&linkid=178&parent=news)