Does a fire alarm outage require a fire watch?

Why an alarm outage matters as much as a sprinkler outage

Sprinklers control a fire; the alarm tells people to leave and calls for help. A building whose alarm panel has failed, whose monitoring line is down or whose detection is disabled by a contractor has lost the system that turns a small fire into an evacuation instead of a tragedy. The fire code treats the alarm as a required system in the buildings that must have one, and its impairment triggers the same procedure as a sprinkler impairment.

What the procedure is

Notify the fire department and the fire code official immediately. Designate an impairment coordinator if the building has not already. Tag the impaired equipment. Follow the fire code official’s direction: in Houston, the Fire Marshal’s Office decides whether the building must be evacuated or may keep an approved fire watch, and on what terms. Keep the watch continuous and logged until the system is restored and tested. Notify everyone again when it is.

What the fire watch does when the alarm is out

The officer replaces the detection and the notification the system would have provided: walking every floor or area on the interval set, looking and smelling for smoke and heat, checking exits, and, if a fire is found, raising the alarm by whatever method the plan specifies for a building without a working system, which may be voice, air horns, radios to staff or a phone tree, then calling 911 and warning occupants. The method is written into the post orders before the first round.

Monitoring outages and partial failures

A panel that works but cannot reach the monitoring company, or a zone that is disabled while the rest works, is still an impairment, and the fire marshal decides what it requires. Tell the authority the specifics and follow the direction. This page is a summary, not legal advice; the fire alarm outage page explains how a watch is started, and the fire alarm outages article goes into the situations in more detail.