Fire Safety Rises High At Apartments

Apr 1, 2004 12:00 PM

The nearly 1,600 residents of the Mediterranean Towers West (MedWest) luxury co-op apartment building in Fort Lee, N.J., had become accustomed to the unwelcome sound of a noisy false fire alarm about once a week.

“We have 45 high-rises in Fort Lee, more than any other city in New Jersey. At one point, between all these buildings, we had up to 200 false alarms,” Ft. Lee fire marshal Steven Curry says. “Many of the high-rise buildings built in the '70s and '80s are not up to current fire codes,” he continues. “The life expectancy of these older fire alarm systems is just 10 to 20 years. Plus the fire codes have changed a great deal within the last two decades and systems need to be updated.”

To address MedWest's needs and bring the building up to standards, Curry and the building's management team turned to United Federated Systems (UFS), a specialist in fire and security systems and a distributor and installer of Silent Knight fire alarm systems.

Beyond the false alarms, MedWest also needed to address problems with loudness and overall system monitoring. Also, several common areas were in need of more up-to-date monitoring devices. UFS specified a Silent Knight system which included an IFP-1000 integrated voice evacuation system and addressable fire control panel, 600 Intelliknight SD 505 smoke detectors, 90 SD 500-PS pull stations, and alarms in every unit.

Six hundred smoke detectors and 90 pull stations are now spread out through the building's common areas and commercial spaces.

“Since the Silent Knight system was put in place, we haven't had one false alarm, and we've had zero resident complaints,” MedWest board member Andrea Lieb-owitz says.

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