The residential high rise at 77 Main Street has been problematic to Lockport Fire Department over the years.
Originally developed as senior living apartments, Urban Park Towers is equipped with pull-string health cords in each apartment for the residents to use in an emergency. The complex is no longer for seniors only and the problem is, according to Interim Fire Chief Luca Quagliano, those cords get pulled a lot — and not just in emergency circumstances.
Quagliano this week asked members of the city Fire Board for their thoughts and support for charging a $150 fee to Urban Park Towers for every false alarm triggered.
LFD responded to about a dozen false alarms at Urban Park Towers between September 2021 and the end of January, according to Quagliano. Had the fee been in place, the cost to the property owner would have been $1,350.
“I’m guessing on average we could charge $3,200 a year for the amount of false alarms at that building,” Quagliano said.
The fee isn’t intended as a money maker, Quagliano said, it’s about increasing safety. There is no indication in an apartment when the alarm is tripped, and firefighters on the opposite side of the door do not know whether the resident is in need, or just doesn’t want to open the door.
“We show up, we check the main panel in the office. It’s room number 302. We go banging on 302. They don’t want to be bothered, so we think they’re unresponsive. Possibly,” Quagliano said. “We open the door. Who knows what’s waiting on the other side?”
The fee for a false alarm would not be charged to the triggering tenant but instead the building owner since, Quagliano said, “They refuse to take this system out.”
“It’s no longer a requirement, but by building code they’d have to remove it (and) put a blank cover over it so the switch is completely gone,” he said. “They can’t just disable them (by code and) they don’t want to spend the money to do that.”
If the prospect of a bill for false alarms caused Urban Park Towers ownership to “correct this issue, it certainly would save on a lot of wear-and-tear (on emergency response vehicles) and make our men safer,” Quagliano said. “Every time I went to one of these it was just, ‘Is today the day I get the shotgun to the chest?’ Just because they don’t want to be bothered and don’t open the door?”
Quagliano’s proposed false-alarm fee schedule would waive the first three false alarms per month.
There used to be a false-alarm fee in place in the city, according to Quagliano.
“For whatever reason it fell by the way side,” he said. “We’re just trying to get it going again.”