Student Paper's Fire-Alarm Article Leads Santa Ana College to Begin Hourly Patrols - Chronicle.com
Student Paper's Fire-Alarm Article Leads Santa Ana College to Begin Hourly Patrols
Santa Ana College has begun hourly fire patrols in seven buildings because their fire alarms are not working — and in some cases have been broken since 2005, according to the Orange County Register.
Problems with the alarms were revealed last week by the community college’s student newspaper, El Don. Subsequently the board of the Rancho Santiago Community College District, of which the college is a part, met in emergency session to begin the process of buying a new central alarm system for the campus. In the meantime, the college is seeking parts to repair the existing alarm systems in individual buildings. Repairs are expected to take about a month.
El Don reported that alarms in some buildings had been switched to a “silent” mode, rather than getting needed repairs, and that in the gym alarms were not working and water lines leading to fire hoses had been disconnected. College officials said the general counsel’s office had begun an investigation aimed at finding out who is to blame for the alarm failures.
But why stop there???
Fire alarms broken at Santa Ana College: Some officials knew of problem for two years.
SANTA ANA - Fire alarms are not working at seven buildings at Santa Ana College as part of a longstanding problem that was known but not addressed, officials confirmed this week.
Until the alarms are fixed, the buildings are on manual "fire watch" during which a security guard manually patrols looking for problems at least once an hour while people are in the buildings.
College trustees were not told about the broken alarms which in some cases date back to 2005 and originally involved as many as 11 buildings, said John Hanna, president of the board of the Rancho Santiago Community College District, which operates the college.
"We're furious about this," Hanna said. "People in management were informed and nothing was done."
The seven buildings on manual fire watch are the Cook Gym, Hammond Hall, Phillips Hall, the Library, and the Administration, Fine Arts, and Security buildings, officials said.
The issue became public this week only after the El Don college newspaper published an investigative story about the system. The district board held an emergency meeting Tuesday night to approve a request for bids for a new alarm system which could take as much as two years to install.
Meanwhile, parts are being sought to fix the antiquated, standalone, bell-type fire alarms and they should all be fixed in about a month, officials said.
"Everything will be functional within the next 20 to 30 days," college President Erlinda Martinez said. "Each building will have 100 percent of its alarms functioning."
Martinez said she only found out about the problem "a few weeks ago" during a meeting of the campus facilities committee.
The problems came to light in 2005 and 2006 inspection reports, but there are no records that anything was ever done with the information. Campus safety officials told the El Don campus newspaper they had reported the problems but repairs were not made.
Minutes from previous facility committee meetings over the last two years do not show any mention of problems with fire alarms, despite written reports about them.
In some cases, problems with the bells ringing caused officials to simply disable them instead of repairing them.
A May 2006 inspection report shows not only rusted and non-working alarms, but also many panels that had dead batteries and other routine maintenance that had not been performed.
The El Don reported that alarms in two buildings had been switched to "silent mode" rather than having been repaired.
The paper also reported that alarms inside Cook Gymnasium, scene of large athletic events attended by hundreds, are not working and its fire hoses were disconnected from water lines.
An investigation by the college's general counsel's office is underway to determine what happened and who is at fault, officials said.
The college had money to make the repairs from hundreds of millions in bond money that the district had acquired for building construction and renovations. Thirty million dollars of that pool was used to build a new sheriff's academy that recently opened.
The problem seemed to have been related to a decision to replace the standalone ringing alarm bells with a new technology that will allow all the buildings to be connected to a central panel in the campus security building.
Instead of repairing broken alarms, campus staff apparently did nothing because of plans to install the new system. However, no bid requests ever went out for the new system until this week, Hanna said.
"It boggles the mind why that wasn't done," Hanna said. "Had someone come and asked us for money to get that done, we would have given it to them."
Santiago Canyon College, also operated by the same district, used deferred maintenance funding to repair its alarm system in 2005 and 2006, Hanna said.
Even in the October facilities meeting in which the issue came to light, Hanna said no mention was made of the broken alarms until a concerned faculty member brought it up.
Martinez said that the college has hired Pyro-Comm of Huntington Beach to make temporary repairs on the standalone system and will seek bids to install a modern system called "Notifier."
It is against state law for classroom buildings to not have working fire alarms.
Santa Ana Fire Marshal Lori Smith said the city is aware of the problem and that the college voluntarily proposed the plan to have a security officer patrol buildings hourly whenever students are present.
"They are under notice to repair the existing system and get it working," Smith said.
Martinez said that college officials are also looking into reports there may be problems with sprinkler systems and water hydrant pressure. "We are following up on everything that was brought up," she said.
But wait! There is more!
Faulty fire alarms at Santa Ana College put thousands at potential risk:
The alarms have been broken since 2005, according to contractor reports. 'Something's rotten, trustee board president said, 'and we're going to find out about it.'
Seven buildings at Santa Ana College, including the administration offices and the library, have faulty fire alarms, placing thousands of students, faculty and staff in potential danger.
The alarms have been broken since at least June 2005, according to reports given to the school at that time by a contractor the college hired. Some have broken handles, others do not ring, and at least one was turned off because it would not stop sounding.
The Rancho Santiago Community College District has hired a law firm to find out why nothing was done for more than two years after reports documented the problems.
"It is an unacceptable practice to compromise the safety of our students or visitors," said Board of Trustees President John Hanna, who called an emergency meeting Tuesday for trustees to pass a resolution to repair the alarms. "Inspectors don't issue reports just for the fun of doing it. Somebody knew about this and made a conscious decision not to do anything about it. Clearly something's rotten in Denmark, and we're going to find out about it."
Inspections completed in 2005 and 2006 revealed widespread problems with the college's 1960s equipment, citing several buildings that lacked working fire alarms.
In some of those cases, campus security would not have known if there were a fire because the system makes noise only in the building where the alarm is pulled and does not alert authorities. The campus security building is one of those where the alarms don't work.
The college district in 2003 earmarked $400,000 in state maintenance funds to go toward replacing Santa Ana's nearly obsolete fire alarm system, but four years later, the overhaul has not been started.
The problems came to the attention of top district officials last month. Short-term repairs approved at the board meeting, expected to cost $68,000, should be completed in about a month. Meanwhile, security guards at the college have started a fire-watch program and hourly are patrolling buildings without alarm coverage. Other buildings without working alarms include the gym, the fine-arts building and the theater.
Three portable classrooms also had broken alarms, but they recently were fixed.
"I'm not sure whether it was a communication thing, a process thing, or an individual person thing," district Chancellor Eddie Hernandez said. "This should not have taken this length of time to solve it. There are plenty of people in retrospect that dropped the ball." Santa Ana Fire Department officials, who annually review the college for fire code violations, do not inspect fire alarms but rely on the college to hire a contractor to ensure they are working.
The college's fire alarms date to about 1966, making replacement parts nearly impossible to find, according to a contractor's report this month.
Officials said the district will replace the old alarm system with one that will notify security staff of fires and include loudspeakers and strobe lights.
It could take as long as two years before the new system, expected to cost between $1.5 and $2 million, is installed.
Santa Ana College President Erlinda Martinez said she did not learn of the broken fire alarms until inspectors brought it to the college's attention again last month. She declined to state which college officials had known about the broken alarms in 2005, saying only that reports about the alarms "didn't rise to the level to where we took action."
Hernandez , the district chancellor, said he was certain some school administrators knew about the problem. "This is a classic case of something falling through the cracks, but safety should come to the top of everyone's list."
Santiago Canyon College, which is part of the same community college district, finished replacing its alarm system in 2005, after two years of construction at a cost of $247,000.
