In the Know - Volume 1, No. 5
Commentary on the Negligence of Fire Alarm Upkeep
In response to the Marvin Garden and Montclair State articles in the CDT recently and the lax attitude tenants have towards smoke detectors, a series of email exchanges took place this morning. I would like to provide excerpts for you to study and reflect. The participants of the emails are District Magistrate Carmine Prestia (an active Alpha Fire Company member and former chief), Prof. Gifford Albright (former head of Architectural Engineering), and Professor Moses Ling.
Smoke Detectors – What a pain! They ring when we generate a little smoke. So I took the battery out.
CDT - Wise said lack of smoke detector maintenance has been an "epidemic" in the area for a while -- it's an issue of upkeep that the tenants are responsible for. "Tenants don't take good care of their smoke detectors," he said. "The landlord can't be expected to bust in and check to see if their smoke detectors are working." (Albright)
CDT - The circumstances were eerily similar: Both fires started in lounge sofas while students slept, both set off alarms that had become all-too-frequent nuisances and both led to evacuations of the dormitories. But while the fire at Seton Hall University's Boland Hall in January 2000 ended with three students dead and 58 injured, a fire early yesterday at Montclair State University's Bohn Hall was quickly extinguished with the help of the building's sprinklers. No one was hurt, though about 700 students in the 16-floor building had to be evacuated. (Albright)
PRESTIA - All of us continue to be concerned about the apathy on the part of a large number of renters who DO NOT maintain their smoke detectors and in fact disable them at times. Some cases I hear about in my court:
In a landlord tenant action the landlord asks for damages that include charges for replacing dead batteries in all the detectors in the apartment. The lease clearly states that the tenant(s) are responsible for battery replacement.
Similarly, the landlord seeks damages for replacing detectors that are missing or broken and only discovered on move out inspection. The lease clearly states that the tenant(s) are to report such damages to the landlord so the detectors can be replaced. There was no record of the tenant(s) ever reporting the issue.
The most frightening: Police and/or fire departments answer some kind of call at a fraternity and in the process find that the fire alarm system is completely disabled. In some cases the control panels have been broken if not destroyed. In many cases this is discovered in the midst of some social event with hundreds of people in attendance and many under the influence of intoxicating substances. The last one scares me the most because I can see Dr. Pangborn, myself, and our fellow firefighters carrying the fatalities to the curb and covering them with sheets at four in the morning after some inferno has ripped through the house.
LING - Coincidentally, I had an experience Wednesday with out-of-service smoke detectors. I was walking through a four-story apartment building with the landlord. We entered only two apartments. One apartment had a smoke detector hanging open with no battery and the second apartment smoke detector had a cover fashioned out of paper, either for painting or avoid nuisance alarm.
Prestia - Every lease I have seen since I took the bench in 1996 has wording that clearly places the responsibility for changing batteries in the detectors on the tenants. Likewise the same or next paragraph of the lease will state that the tenant is responsible for immediately reporting malfunctioning detectors to the landlord who is then responsible for repair or replacement.
Hay bales! If a fire starts in that stuff we might be standing at the ready with the apparatus engines running when the alarm comes in and still be too late.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I hear all the time.
So what is the big deal with non-functional smoke detectors? – You, the tenant, are responsible for all the damages if disaster strikes! It is not worth the loss of life, physical harm, monetary loss, and mental anguish.
Get in the habit of checking the batteries twice a year when the time change occurs. Check your smoke detectors this weekend when you change the clock.