Firefighters have alarming weekend
Staff writer
False alarms Sunday evening through Monday morning at Westview Manor kept Peabody Fire Chief Colton Glenn hustling.
Westview’s fire alarm company notified dispatchers of numerous fire alarms through the night, and the fire department was paged to the nursing home.
The first fire alarm happened about 7 p.m. Saturday, Glenn said.
He and other firefighters rushed to the facility but found no fire.
The next alarm came at 7:14 p.m. Sunday. Another came at 11:57 p.m.
Glenn told his firefighters to stay home unless he called for them.
A 2:44 a.m. Monday, yet another fire alarm was canceled by the alarm company.
Glenn responded to a 4:42 a.m. alarm, spent more than an hour on scene, and told dispatchers that fire alarm technicians had not yet come to make repairs.
Westview’s fire alarms are being replaced, but about half of the alarms are old, Glenn said.
“The alarm company said the alarm was in Zone 64,” Glenn said. “There is no Zone 64 in that building. There was a fire alarm number 64.”
When the fire department was summoned Saturday, Glenn and other firefighters went to Westview, made sure there was no fire or smoke, then silenced the alarm before clearing the system.
Sunday evening through Monday morning, the alarm company kept calling in fire alarms for Zone Three, the southeast wing of the building, he said.
“There are about 8 to 10 rooms in that hallway,”
he said.
Each room has a smoke detector and there also are smoke detectors in the hallway.
“I kept trying to figure out which smoke alarm it was,” he said. “I messed with them and tried to fix them.”
He eventually called Westview’s owner.
“She showed up about 5:30 or 6 in the morning,” he said. “She made some calls to the alarm company, and they were able to get a tech out there the next day.”
The problem turned out to be one faulty detector.
“When I went to bed about 6:30 in the morning I was beat,” Glenn said.
But he said he didn’t regret having gone to Westview so many times.
“It’s better to have us there if we were not needed than not have us there if they needed us,” he said.