Fire alarms disabled in campus buildings

Recent renovations to campus fire alarms may have temporarily disconnected them from the department of public safety's awareness. But no need to worry -- they're up and running again.

Facilities Management has just completed a "retrofit" of the wires connecting the fire alarms to the central station where they are monitored and then sent to public safety for response.

During the retrofit, which eliminated many old and fraying wires, the alarms were transferred to phone lines and hooked up to modems. The alarm being worked on could not alert public safety to the whereabouts of a possible fire.

Signs reading, "In case of fire please contact public safety, x 6851" were posted throughout CSUS. The signs were hung in an effort to make sure potential alarm-pullers would know to also call public safety themselves because the alarm would not.

The alarms did not, however, lose their ability to sound a local alarm to evacuate the building.

Once alerted, the Department of Public Safety would dispatch an officer to respond to fire alarms. The officer's main duty is to clear the area for anyone else who needs to get inside, like the fire department if they are called.

According to John Woods of the State Fire Marshall, many of the buildings on campus are not required to be connected to the fire department. Only buildings with over 100 overhead sprinklers need to be directly linked. And those alarms will only alert the fire department if the sprinklers have actually gone off.

With the number of false alarms that CSUS gets, that policy continues to eliminate many wasted trips.

The new retrofit will eliminate many of the false alarms that happened as a result of the old wires.