BRENHAM FIRE DEPT. WORKING TO REDUCE FALSE ALARM CALLS TO BSSLC

  

The Brenham Fire Department is working with the state Fire Marshal’s Office to reduce the amount of false alarm calls to the Brenham State Supported Living Center.

According to Interim Brenham Fire Marshal Roger Williams, the department ran approximately 178 false alarm calls to the state school in 2019. He said the matter immediately caught his eye when he came to the Brenham Fire Department in September, but it has been an ongoing problem for several years.

Williams said one of the challenges of these kinds of calls is fighting complacency within the department.

 

Williams said the difficulties lie mostly with behavioral problems of state school residents, rather than mechanical or maintenance issues.

Williams said the Brenham Fire Department and state Fire Marshal’s Office are trying to come up with code compliant options that will allow continued fire protection while making false alarm calls less likely. Those include removing or relocating manual pull alarm stations, in order to make them less accessible for residents and more accessible for staff.  Another potential solution would be to place protective covers with built-in pre-alarm systems over the alarm stations.  The pre-alarms would alert staff when an alarm station is being tampered with.

Williams said there are quite a few moving pieces that make this situation more difficult than what it may seem initially.

 

Williams said he is also consulting with a state-supported school in southwest Texas that is experiencing similar issues to Brenham’s state school, in order to see what methods have been successful for them.

Williams said the department will consider all viable options in keeping with its continued focus on the safety of the public.

 

Williams said the process should move forward throughout the course of the year. He added, as the holiday season is over, he believes the fire department will start looking more closely into the matter within the next month.