West Midlands Fire Service concerned with the rise of false fire alarms in student accommodation acr
- Kellie Sadler
- May 4, 2018
- 3 min read
The West Midlands emergency services are concerned with the increased number of false fire alarms from 2016 to 2017 in Birmingham’s student accommodation.
Exclusive data obtained from a Freedom Of Information request shows that false fire alarms in student accommodations have risen by 48% between 2016 to 2017.
Paul Bayliss, watch commander at West Midlands Fire Service said: “This is a big concern to us as 50% of our station area is the university and the students living there.”
Paul believes that this may be because of the increase of students in Birmingham: “I was surprised with the increase as we have done a lot to try and cut them down, I don’t necessarily know the reason but maybe universities are taking more students on so there are more students in accommodations now.”
Figures from HESA show that between four universities in Birmingham, between 2015/16 to 2016/17 there has been a 21% increase of students studying in the city.
False fire alarms reduce the amount of emergency service staff and facilities available for when a real fire occurs.
“False fire alarms are a waste of time for the fire department for real emergencies, maybe waste may not be the right word, but it is using up a resource that could be used better somewhere else potentially.
“Say we go to the Barber Institute of Arts for an alarm, whilst my fire engine is at the incident, until we investigate it to make sure there is no fire and we are happy, that fire engine is not available for any other calls.
“So in that respect, you are taking the alarm if it’s false, it is taking away the resource that is potentially the closest. Let’s say the building next to the Institute then caught fire at the same time, hypothetically, we are going to have to send two fire engines from different fire stations to put it out which could be 5-10 minutes away.”
The West Midlands Fire Service website says that response time is “key to your chance of surviving” as “a small delay could heighten the chances of death or more serious injury.” This means five to ten minutes can make a difference in an emergency due to a false alarm.
Paul Bayliss said that the most false alarms are due to cooking: “Sadly, it’s a lot of the Chinese students who seem to be the ones doing it, I think it’s the way they cook and the cultural difference. I spoke to a few of them and they’ve never used an oven before, so when they come to England they don’t know how to use it properly.”
Paul hopes that with awareness and education, this can be prevented: “I think there’s a lot of education, which I’ve started to try and get involved in to do with the different cultures.
“I’ve just done a fire safety video in Mandarin with some guys from the university for Chinese New Year, it was tweeted out a few months ago by the university and West Midlands Fire Service.
“It’s only a 17-second clip but it was brilliant as it shows a few tips on what to do.”
One way that West Midlands Fire Service has tried to challenge and cut down the number of false alarms is with ‘Call Challenging.’
“When fire control now gets the 999 call, they will now phone for example the university or hospital security, who will then have two minutes to investigate to see if it’s a fire or not.
“A lot of the time we’ll then get a message saying to stand down from the incident because it’s just burnt toast, so that’s really helped to prevent it.”
Aziza Aziz from Birmingham City University’s accommodation services said: “We are unaware of the change of number of fires in halls and have full details of fire prevention measured in the terms and conditions on our website.
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