Bad Landlord Refuses Fire Alarm Fix And Ends Up With Huge Fine And Emergency Bill

Heather Hall

3 weeks ago

When you’re a responsible landlord who values safety and quality, it’s hard to watch another landlord cut corners, especially when it puts tenants at risk.

So, what would you do if your friend’s building was plagued with a faulty fire alarm and the landlord refused to fix it promptly?

Would you ignore it because it’s not your problem?

Or would you do what you can to help?

In the following story, one landlord finds himself in this very situation.

Here’s how it all played out.

Good Landlord vs Bad Landlord. Decisive victory.

I’m a real estate developer and investor, and I own/manage several mid-size multi-family rental properties.

I’m aggressive with rents, but I love the construction side of the business and take great pride in keeping my properties in excellent condition.

I also ensure my staff provides top-notch customer service—I never understood why property managers don’t have the same attitude towards customer service as hoteliers.

Anyways…

One of my friends lives in a building owned by a very “traditional” landlord.

A grumpy old lady bangs on the door to collect rent every month, things don’t get fixed unless you threaten to file a dispute, and in general, everything is fixed as cheaply as possible.

Here’s where the whole issue started.

My friend called me last week and said her fire alarm had been going off since 3 am.

Not the fire alarm, actually, but the warning tone on the annunciator panel – this is the device that receives inputs from heat detectors, smoke detectors, etc, all around the building and monitors and provides power and battery backup.

This panel was apparently detecting a fault, and sounding the warning tone.

This isn’t the fire alarm, but it sounds like a loud smoke detector going off.

It cannot be silenced until it is serviced.

In my buildings, they occasionally do go off (every few years), and, as with everything else, my staff must attend within half an hour.

In this case, the appropriate action would be to call the fire safety contractor for an emergency service call.

He decided to go check out the issue since the landlord was in no hurry.

My friend’s landlord informed her that the contractor had been called, but it was not an emergency, so they would be there in four days.

Four days of this alarm going off 24/7 constantly means no sleep for anyone.

This was likely to avoid the overtime surcharge for an emergency service.

Or about $150.

However, the manager was kind enough to wrap the panel in several towels with packing tape to slightly muffle the alarm.

He made a half-hearted attempt to silence it by pulling the leads off the backup battery.

Since the device is hard-wired, this just doubled the frequency of the alarm to include a “backup battery warning.”

I grabbed my panel keys and went over to see if I could help my friend out.

I was able to open the panel since I have my own keys, and they are the same.

It didn’t take long for him to figure out the problem.

The battery leads had been pulled off, but the main was still connected, so the beeper was going off like crazy.

The manager didn’t know enough to turn off the breaker in the electrical room, and I couldn’t access it.

The manager didn’t answer the phone.

Upon opening the panel, I immediately saw why it had been failing on and off for years (according to my friend) – the batteries were 10 years out of date, and the leads on the terminals were blackened.

It looked like the landlord had been swapping out the old batteries with new ones for the yearly inspection, then putting the old ones back in and maybe returning the new batteries for a refund.

Now I realized why the service call was scheduled so late – so the LL could get some temporary “new” batteries put in time.

While looking at it, his screwdriver slipped and fried the whole circuit board.

Now, I’m a licensed property manager but not an electrician, so it would be unethical for me to remove the hot lead from the bus bar and silence the alarm, BUT low-voltage wiring is a different story.

Unfortunately, my insulated screwdriver slipped as I was tightening the battery lead back on, and I accidentally bridged the hot side of the bus bar with the low-voltage side of the circuit board.

Luckily, my eyes were averted to avoid arcing injury. 120V right to the control board.

Ouch.

A big flash, breaker tripped somewhere, and silence.

The circuit board was toast – the service tech would have to install a new panel with new batteries.

There was no fire alarm now, but the landlord still wasn’t in a hurry, so it was time to escalate the issue.

My friend contacted the landlord and reported that something had happened, and the panel was silenced.

She also asked if he intended to provide a 24-hour fire watch until the fire alarm system was fully functional, as required by section 6 of the Fire Code.

He affirmed that he did not and that she could **** off.

Her next call was to the assistant chief fire inspector, since she happened to have his business card handy.

His response was much more gracious – he was happy to provide the necessary firewatch, and contacted the landlord to inform him of the fact.

The fire department was more than happy to provide their services.

The fireman’s union is a strong one, and their hourly rate for emergency services like this are comparable to a mid-town Manhattan law firm.

I’m told the bill reached $3,000 before the landlord called the service tech to replace the annunciator panel.

I’d like to say he also paid the $5,000 fine, but I understand he is fighting that in court.

In the meantime, the building sleeps peacefully with a fully functional and up-to-date fire alarm.

Wow! What a dangerous situation to put your tenants in.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit had to say about this story.

This person explains how it could’ve been silenced.