2014 Fire Department Annual Report

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8 V. Alarms 2014 Annual Report · Fire Department · St. Anthony Village, Minnesota Dollar Loss from Fire Breakdown by Incident Type Incident Type Count Total Values Total Losses Total Saved Percent Lost Percent Saved 111 Building ﬁ re 3 $765,000 $1,600 $763,400 0.21% 99.79% 113 Cooking ﬁ re, conﬁ ned to 1 $20,000 $465 $19,535 2.32% 97.68% 131 Passenger vehicle ﬁ re 4 $14,250 $9,250 $5,000 64.91% 35.09% 137 Camper or recreational vehicle ﬁ re 1 $68,227 $62,047 $6,180 90.94% 9.06% 154 Dumpster or other outside 1 $31,523,900 $150 $31,523,750 0.00% **.**% Grand Totals:10 $32,391,377 $73,512 $32,317,865 Total Percent Saved: 99.77% V. AlarmsV. Alarms When most people hear the word “alarms” and “ﬁ re department” in the same sentence, they think of smoke detectors or ﬁ re alarms. For years that has always been the case however, as we as a society see the beneﬁ t of early alerting, new alarms have been developed and implemented which fall under our level of expertise to respond to. Sprinkler systems are becoming more and more common in commercial properties as well as educational and health care institutions. As the building code and ﬁ re code become updated, you will start to see systems in larger residential homes as well. The alarm tied to a sprinkler system alerts us to water ﬂ owing through the system which could mean that system was activated due to a ﬁ re, broken pipe, or malicious intent. Either way, the ﬁ re department is responsible to respond to that alarm. Carbon monoxide (CO) has become a common topic for us to discuss during our educational presentations with adults. Many folks don’t have a high level of understanding on it but they do know that since it is colorless and odorless, they need a detector to warn them if there are dangerous levels of it in their home. Much of what we cover with people is the use and placement of a CO detector in their homes and what to do if the detector alarms. Medical alarms are another alarm that has been added in recent years. As they become more affordable for people to buy, we are seeing an increase in our city of placement of them in resident’s homes. As was mentioned previously, early alerting for all of these alarm categories is key. To be able to utilize a medical alarm that will contact 911 for you early on in a medical situation can have lifesaving beneﬁ ts. Properly installed, used, and maintained, alarms are a real asset to the property owner, resident and ﬁ re department. At times however, alarms can activate for a number of reasons which require a response from us to your home or business. We however don’t mind that but keep in mind that we do treat all alarms as actual rather than false unless pertinent information was given to us early on in our response. From 2007 to 2014, the ﬁ re department responded to 582 various alarm activations.