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INUVIK
Out of about 85 fire alarms during the month of January, only two were due to real fires.

Fire Chief Jim Sawkins stands by a fire alarm at the fire hall on Jan. 27. The fire department offers a program where residents can pick up a free smoke alarm for their home. The volunteer fire department has received more than 80 calls in January – all except two were false. - Katherine Hudson/NNSL photo

Although false alarms may be a nuisance, the department responds to every call. Inuvik received its own wake-up call to the devastation a real fire can present on Jan. 31 as a fire consumed a house on Gwich'in Road.

Fire Chief Jim Sawkins broke down the rash of false alarms to five per cent being malicious – a very high number, according to Sawkins – and the remaining 95 per cent being due to faulty smoke alarms or smoke detectors.

Sawkins said the issue at hand is the life expectancy of smoke alarms in Inuvik is far shorter than the average 10 years due to the dry and dusty environment.

"People just typically don't look after them like they should. They need to be vacuumed out once a month, especially in these conditions," said Sawkins. "A lot of people should realize at home, that it is the law to have a working smoke alarm."

A smoke alarm is located in individual apartments, or in a home, and rings locally. A smoke detector – which is in the hallways of apartment buildings, for example – is part of an alarm system and doesn't ring locally, but is tied into the fire alarm panel.

Sawkins said the 95 per cent of the false alarms have been due to mechanical, maintenance or system problems.

"I've been talking with a number of property owners, facility managers, trying to cut down the false alarms by getting them to maintain the systems and they're receptive," said Sawkins.

The fire chief said he'd rather deal with the issue through education rather than levy fines on the facilities which have generated multiple false alarm calls to the fire department.

For the five per cent who maliciously set off the alarms, a false fire alarm is a criminal offence. Under the Criminal Code of Canada, "anyone who wilfully, without reasonable cause, circulates or causes to be made an alarm of fire is guilty of an indictable offence."

Sawkins said the Town of Inuvik is currently working to consolidate all the fee bylaws into one. He said if that doesn't happen within the next six months, he will propose his own cost-recovery bylaw.

"For those that don’t want to fix the problem, we have to establish some kind of enforcement ... It's typically one or two warnings for the calendar year, and everything after that would cost. Typically, the cost recovery is based on the department's transport response rate and that currently down south is $410 per vehicle per hour and then $205 for every half hour thereafter," said Sawkins.

"That could become very costly. There's one particular apartment building that we've responded to just before Christmas until now that would be into the town for more than $11,000 if the bylaw was in place. It costs the town in order to send me or my deputy, the vehicles, the wear and tear, to maintain the systems here."

Once an alarm comes into the alarm panel at the fire hall, Sawkins receives a call as well. He said either he, the deputy fire chief or another officer investigates the situation and, if it's real, sends the call out for backup.

The volunteer fire department, made up of about 40 members, receives all the information on their pagers, even the discussions back and forth concerning a false alarm.

"It's hard for me to maintain the alert level and the morale of the firefighters when we have so many false alarms," said Sawkins.

Since Sawkins has spoken with property managers and the town, the volume of false calls have decreased since the initial spike at the beginning of the year.

Sawkins said he is available if anyone has questions about their system, wants consultation about smoke versus heat detectors or if anyone wants to benefit from a program at the fire hall which gives out smoke alarms free of charge.

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