London airports raising false alarms with the Fire Brigade
 

There's an interesting report on the BBC News site about the London Fire Brigade wanting to charge to turn out to false alarms. Although the report highlights a number of hospitals that have generate many false alarms over the last year, it also identifies 229 'false alarms' at airports.

There is nothing to indicate whether the airport false alarms were in terminals etc. or whether they were because of aircraft emergencies. It would be handy to know whether a turnout to an airport for an aircraft with a problem, which subsequently lands safely, is classified as a false alarm. If it were to be the case, it seems that the LFB and airports have a rather different interpretation of what the fire service does at an airport.....

Money is everything.
end of. :ugh:

Building Owners have a responsibility regarding the proper operation and performance of their installed fire alarm system. Repeated call outs to systems that fail to operate as required can be charged if the owner fails to follow recommendations to resolve the repeated false alarms. And that is how it should be. It is highly unlikely that charges will be filed unless repeated failures are in place based on ignorance. Providing efforts are being made to resolve, fines will not generally be issued. This is nothing new and has been in effect since circa 2005, when UK fire alarm regulatory reform came into place.

Fire crews have been involved in road accidents with loss of life as a result of responding to false alarms and it cost us, as tax payers, a fortune.

Major UK airports take their fire strategy very seriously and I very much doubt that any would find themselves in the position of being fined. The example you give would not form part of the scope of issuing fines.

Problem with charging for false alarms could be someone thinks they can smell a fire and not do anything about it in fear of charges, thus the possible incident becomes larger.

Tullamarine had a problem with false calls for non existent fire alarms.
it was eventually traced to a weakness in the implementation of the modbus protocol used in the control system. the packet sequence got out of whack at times of high traffic because of the software comms error. ...a programming error that had existed for some time but had never manifested.

it would be frustrating beyond belief for the airport.

Mostly these false alarms are automatically generated and are not as a result of a "smell of smoke" or a 999 call by a person.

We have them from time to time at work caused by unattended toasters or work producing fumes where the alarm system in that area has not been isolated

In a time of scarce resources then airports having false alarms which results in FB services going to airport false alarm rather than a house fire can be kind of hard to justify when bodies are taken out of a house.

If airports have issues with software or systems then only way they respond is having to pay call out charges.

Continually paying for call out charges because you won't get systems fixed seems only way to focus the mind.

racedo
I think the point people are making is it is very unclear from the article if LFB mean unreliable "automated" alarms generating multiple false positives (fair game for charges IMHO) or calls such as "aircraft accident imminent" made by ATC which sets half of London Fire Brigade heading to the airport but later turns out to land safely and not require fire and rescue. I'd be appalled if I thought the LFB were going to charge for that.

I'd expect that any fire hazard within an airport non aircraft related would be better dealt with by the airport fire department rather than LFB because why would you call 999 when you have a team already on site?

I can only imagine their interpretation of a "false alarm" is when a Full Emergency is called for example an aircraft loses 50% off its power which requires outside emergency services attendance and the subject aircraft lands safely.

I hope I'm wrong but if this is the case then the Ambulance service can then jump on the bandwagon because they also attend but when did it become all about money?

Just to be clear, "Aircraft Accident Imminent" when declared by ATC means exactly that. An aircraft accident will occur (eg. subject aircraft is confirmed as unable to deploy undercarriage). Any uncertainty should alter the incident status to "Full Emergency" or some category below this such as "Local Standby" (all dependent on degree of severity). "Aircraft Accident Imminent" is (thankfully) rarely used and should leave no room for doubt amongst emergency crews called upon to attend. In contrast, most "Full Emergency" incidents (and lower) do result in a safe landing. "Full Emergency" still ensures a comprehensive turnout by emergency services.

Scrotchidson,

Airport RFFS specialise in aircraft-related incidents. If there's a common or garden chip-pan fire in a food outlet in a terminal, deploying the airport RFFS may well close the airport due to lack of fire cover: In many cases large airports have a 'domestic' appliance and crew, and they will assess the situation, and call in local Fire Brigade resources as deemed suitable.

As you say, RFFS are there as standby for aircraft incidents and it costs the airport to turn them out for any issue but particularly domestic alarms (fuel, crew training in domestic fire and rescue training, vehicle wear and tear, Fire-Fighter wages and new vehicle costs [because they cant dispatch any fire vehicle required for the airport category to anything that would comprompise its ability to respond to aircraft incidents so they would have to buy a new vehicle] etc etc) and who could say 'No' if there is an operational requirement.

Why would the bean counters do that when its free for Local Authority to be called out and they have a statutory duty to attend?

And why would BAA do that what a LHR there is an LFB wholetime station ON SITE and at City or Gatwick there are LFB stations just round the corner?


However, if there are that many false alarm AFA activations that LFB are being called out 3-4 times a week to airport false alarms then there's a big problem with your fire alarm and call out system.


And all it would take is for a few appropriately trained people on the airport staff team to respond to the AFA first to check for signs of fire before calling LFB out if necessary.

Gonzo,

You're correct with the larger airports however others use their RFFS slightly differently to cover additional tasks like domestics, fire alarm checking in terminals and initial first aid on stand upon request. They don't usually affect the fire category but if it does it would be tactical and wouldn't affect the operation.

Scrotchidson,

Yes, and LHR's RFFS have some duties similar to those you describe, but in that case the LFB wouldn't be called out, which was the whole point of the OP.