The next time you see a fire truck roaring down Putnam Ave with sirens and lights ablaring, the chances are better than even that you’re witnessing a false alarm being played out.
No one seems to know for sure – not the nice woman who oversees the alarm ordinance, not the chairman of the alarms appeal board – but everyone agrees that a huge percentage of the 4,000 annual fire responses in Greenwich are false alarms.
Jim Lash once told me it was as high as 90 percent.
Imagine the enormous waste of fuel and equipment, not to mention the real threats to the firemen and others who are endangered every time a fire truck and ambulance peel out onto the busy streets of Greenwich in response to a false alarm.
First of all, let us attempt to define what constitutes a false alarm. If someone burns a piece of toast and it triggers a smoke alarm – and that alarm then is picked up by the town’s central alarm office sending emergency equipment – it is technically not a false alarm. But it is still an unnecessary use of our fire fighting resources, in my opinion.
There are 6,900 businesses, offices and residences in Greenwich tied to the town’s automated central alarm system. Greenwich has about 23,000 households. That means a vast majority of Greenwich households do not use the automated alarm system.
I think we should increase the monetary penalties for false alarms dramatically in Greenwich. A lot of the veteran fire professionals worry that some residents will disconnect their alarms to which I respond, “So what?” They can call 911 like the rest of us. If they want the piece of mind of having automated responses from firefighters every time they burn their toast, let them pay for it. I shouldn’t have to subsidize their desire to sleep better at night.
The town just raised the registration fee from $10 to $20 to be tied to the central alarm system. That’s peanuts. They had no problem tripling my mooring fee from $35 to $100, and yet my boat doesn’t infringe on other taxpayers. No one is subsiding my irrational desire to float in a big piece of plastic on Long Island Sound. I pay the town more than $900 for storage and other usage fees for my nautical addiction. Seems to me we should be looking for the same kind of fee from those who have already spend thousands on fancy alarms.
Right now, the town does not charge for the first false alarm of the year, only $50 for the second, $100 for the third, $150 for the fourth and $200 for the fifth.
Here is usage fee schedule I would implement:
$200 annual fee to connect to the system; $100 for the first response regardless of cause; $1,000 for the second false alarm; $1,500 for the third; $2,000 for the fourth, and $5,000 for the fifth.
I’ll bet you’d see a rapid decline in the number of false alarms.
