False fire alerts inundate
hospital at alarming rate
■ Fire alarms at Sacred
Heart are often triggered by
dust and debris from
construction projects
By Josh Ryneal
Oregon Daily Emerald
Fire trucks screaming down
the street is a sound the residents
around Sacred Heart Medical
Center hear on a regular basis,
and hospital and fire department
officials say that’s not going to
change anytime soon.
Deputy Fire Marshal Reggie
Augsburger said the fire depart
ment received approximately
five false alarm calls per week
from Sacred Heart during Febru
ary and March, when the hospi
tal renovated a large part of its
first floor.
After consulting response logs,
Augsburger said that they’ve only
received a couple since then, but
other officials dispute this.
Jim Weston, director of Facili
ties Management for the hospital,
said alarms are often triggered by
events other than actual fires.
“It’s my impression that they
go off about once a week,” he
said, adding that the hospital
manages to contact the fire de
partment about the false alarm
before they send trucks about half
the time.
Each fire alarm is thoroughly
investigated by the hospital’s fa
cilities staff and 24-hour security.
“Some of the incidents are cer
tainly preventable, but others are
beyond our control,” Weston said.
Weston said that frequent con
struction projects are to blame for
the errant alarms and every effort
is made by the hospital staff to
contact the fire department be
fore trucks leave the station. The
alarm system automatically noti
fies the fire department when it is
triggered.
He said the thousands of detec
tors are pulled and cleaned
monthly, but the dust and debris
that activates most of the alarms
are unavoidable side effects of
the construction.
A few times, alarms have been
traced to hospital staff burning
popcorn in the microwaves.
“We’re trying to cut down on
that,” he said.
Jim Matthews, fire chief for the
district that includes the hospital,
said that every time they are
called out to the hospital their
team includes three pump trucks,
two ladder trucks, the fire chief
and a medical team.
“Because of the size of the
structure and the fact that a lot of
people in the building can’t save
themselves, that kind of response
is necessary,” he said.
The main hospital building is
680,000 square feet, and the
smaller Oregon Medical Labora
tory measures 32,000 square feet.
Matthews said that other large
buildings, such as the downtown
U.S. Bank tower, have similar
problems with false alarms be
cause of the complexity of fire
control systems and large num
bers of detectors.
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Ryan Starkweather Emerald
Because of the failure of Eugene Ballot Measure 20-31, the Eugene police station,
located in City Hall, was denied funding for the construction of a new facility.
Stations
continued from page 1
not supportive of citywide meas
ures because of their pride in their
area,” he said. “If you look at the
returns, I bet you that will be an
area where we lost heavily.”
Torrey also said that the fire
fighters’ union told him that they
would not support the measure,
but were unclear about their rea
sons.
Options open to supporters of
the plan to provide the depart
ments with new quarters include
putting only the fire or police de
partment funding on the ballot or
simply using existing funds to
renovate the downtown fire de
partment.
“There were some city coun
cilors who wanted to only put
the fire department on the ballot,
but I’m not willing to support a
fire-only measure,” Torrey said.
The measure’s slim margin of
failure has spurred the City
Council into commissioning a
survey to discover why the meas
ure failed and to help revamp the
measure and present it again in
the November general election.
City Councilor David Kelly
said that the survey, done by an
independent polling firm, is only
the first step in determining why
the measure was spurned by Eu
gene voters.
“We want to get a sense of why
supporters were supportive and
why opponents opposed it,” he
said.
Kelly said that he thought peo
ple were opposed to the measure
for a number of different reasons,
ranging from lack of specificity
in the proposal to outright dis
like of the police department.
He called the idea of abandon
ing the measure “highly unlike
ly,” and said that as part of the
committee that drafted the meas
ure, it was well researched and
planned out.
Space is at a premium at both
downtown stations. The police
department currently occupies
much of the basement of City
Hall, and more and more impor
tant operations are being placed
in a space not designed for them.
Rick Siel, a lieutenant at the
downtown police station, said
that when he first arrived on the
force, the only thing in the base
ment was a shooting range.
“It’s not designed for people,”
he said. “But now we have our
entire patrol force housed there,
along with archives and things
like uniform storage — a lot of
critical operations in a space
that’s not big enough.”
When asked about possible
plans for retrofitting the building
up to earthquake-ready standards,
Siel said that while retrofitting is
less expensive, it takes up space
that is already at a premium.
“Retrofitting wouldn’t answer
the space issue, it would only
make it worse,” he said.
The downtown fire station suf
fers from similar space problems.
When it was built in 1964, the
station was not equipped to han
dle both sexes of firefighters.
Glen Potter, communications
director for the Eugene fire de
partment, said that while that
problem has been corrected, fix
ing it has taken up valuable
space.
“There are also problems mov
ing important equipment in and
out of the equipment bay,” he said.
“There’s just not enough room.”
Phil Weiler, Eugene communi
cations director, said that the city
government will have a chal
lenge in balancing the need for
new structures while presenting
the funding measure in a way
that will be palatable to voters.
“We need to find something
that meets the needs of voters, and
this measure contained lots of lit
tle pieces that we may need to re
arrange or move,” Weiler said.
He stressed the need for new
buildings for what he called “es
sential services” like police and
fire units, and said that City Hall
would crumble in a major earth
quake. Weiler compared the City
Hall building, which is built over
a parking garage and supported
by concrete pillars, to a pizza box
suspended by columns of pen
nies.
“The pennies hold up the piz
za box fine, but if you start to
wiggle the box, the pennies col
lapse,” Weiler said.
The same thing would happen
to City Hall in a major earthquake,
he said, and it would fall directly
on the police and fire stations.
“The structure would likely
suffer complete failure,” he said.
“We need to build structures that
would last the next 20 years.”
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