Wireless RTUs Eliminate False Alarms
Every year, false alarms cost Public Safety agencies thousands of dollars in wasted man-hours. Even worse, however, is the threat to public safety posed when firefighters, police, or EMS units are tied up answering a false alarm while a real emergency situation is occurring somewhere else.
This was exactly the situation faced by an Illinois fire department in the early nineties. From their firestation in the village of Justice, Illinois, the Roberts Park Fire Protection District is responsible for serving a population of 25,000 living in the populous southwestern suburbs of Chicago.
United Radio Communications, Inc.: Originally, the Roberts Park Fire Protection District relied on alarms that reported in by telephone line. Unfortunately, many of these telephone lines were old and in poor repair. Rainy weather or any kind of damp conditions would trigger a flurry of false alarms. Even though the alarming system had only ten locations reporting, fire fighters spent many nights chasing multiple false alarms. To remedy the situation, the Roberts Park Fire Protection District contacted the experts at United Radio Communications Inc. of Bridgeview, Illinois.
“They came to us looking for a wireless solution for reporting the alarms,” explained company former owner, Bob Palmer. “We designed a system that would report alarms using some early data radio modems. These were originally designed to send data to vehicles and had an option where you could transmit alarm closures in and out of vehicles. We wrote some software to take any kind of closure and report it back to a common point.”
Brand name reliability: As Palmer explained, this system worked fine and ran for eight years without a problem. However, this kind of “one-off” solution made for a difficult sell to local municipalities, Also, supporting such a system was problematic for a small communications company with limited resources. Luckily by the time the system needed to be upgraded, Zetron had introduced its ULTRAc SCADA system.
“We replaced all of the signaling hardware with Zetron RTUs,” Palmer said. “With a system designed by a small local company, end users always have concerns about what happens if they disappear or go out of business. Now, with an all-Zetron system we have equipment from an internationally known manufacturer.”
Multiple sites: The current alarming system uses Model 1716 RTUs (Remote Terminal Units) at each site. The RTUs report by radio to a Model 1700 Controller connected to a PC running the ULTRAc+ software located in the radio room of the fire station.
“Right now twelve locations are alarmed,” explained Assistant Chief Ed Murphy of the Roberts Park Fire Protection district. “We handle two different school districts, and both have two buildings each. We also have a Presbyterian Church, a Catholic Church, a Catholic School, a nursing home, the Hickory Hills Police department, a municipal building and a bank.”
Paging capabilities add depth: In addition to the ULTRAc screen alarms, United Radio Communications added a Zetron Model 1514 DevicePage to provide alphanumeric pages, and a Model 1517 SentriVoice+ to provide voice pages.
“The Fire Department wanted to have several options installed in their system,” Palmer said. “Any time they had an alarm, they wanted a voice message to go out over their system. We also replaced the fire protection district’s old tone pagers with alphanumeric pagers.’
The new system automatically distinguishes between fire calls and EMS calls. In addition, depending upon the level of alarm call, fire fighters receive an automatic long-range page telling them the location of the fire.
“We receive the initial alarm on the ULTRAc screen and also get a hard copy print out,” Assistant Chief Murphy explained. “The alarm automatically opens our Motorola Pagers to the tones and the SentriVoice+ sends a voice message with the location of the call. For example: ‘Fire alarm, Wilkins School 80001 South 82nd and Hampton.’ It will then broadcast that message twice to be sure everyone gets it.”
The final upgrade United Radio Communications performed was to replace the Fire District’s old console with a Model 4010 desktop console. The Model 4010 lives in the Fire Station radio room alongside the PC running ULTRAc+.
“The Model 4010 is a backup console for our main dispatch,” Assistant Fire Chief Murphy said. “We use it when we go into storm mode— we dispatch for ourselves when thunder storms are rolling through the area.”
Multiple sites plus paging: It is an unfortunate fact of modern life that our schools are increasingly becoming sites of violence. To help protect teachers and students, the ULTRAc alarm system was extended to temporary class room structures attached to two area schools.
“The classrooms are equipped with two buttons, one for fire and one as a kind of ‘panic button’, Assistant Chief Murphy added, “so if a teacher has a problem with a parent, student, or unauthorized person in the building, all they have to do is press the button. The alarm goes through the PC in our radio room and is then forwarded to the Hickory Hills Police Department. They get a light and an alarm notifying them that a teacher is in trouble so they can respond accordingly.”
The wireless ULTRAc alarm has several advantages over the old wireline system. With the ULTRAc system, if either fire or panic button is pressed, the alarm is reported to the fire station and also illuminates a light in the principal’s office to indicate the type of problem: fire, ambulance, or teacher in trouble.
Lowered costs, increased reliability: At the time of writing United Radio Communications was anticipating adding more users to the SCADA alarm system, including several retirement homes and another church. ULTRAc allows monitoring and control of 1000+ remote sites via radio, giving almost unlimited room for expansion.
ULTRAc is also easier and quicker to expand than wireline systems, as well as being much more cost-effective.
“It’s not only saving users the leased line costs,” Palmer pointed out, “there’s also no supervision costs, because the system is all automatic. The ULTRAc SCADA system far exceeds any reporting system around because of its automatic polling function. Whether there are storms or bad weather there are no false alarms. Before, every time they had a false alarm the Fire Protection District had to respond, which meant they had to call in all of their paid personnel. The wireless alarming system paid for itself in a matter of months just in saved overtime alone.”
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