Concern Over Fire Security Overstated

In regards to the fire alarm on Friday evening in a student's room in Gilbert Tower of Currier Complex, a student in the Daniels Tower of the complex made a concerned inquiry of why the fire alarm system in Daniels did not sound, while the three other towers did.

The reason is that the fire group recently installed a new fire alarm system in the Daniels building. The system is programmed to go off when a fire alarm occurs in Daniels. In such an event, the fire control center gets the signal to roll the fire trucks and will automatically sound the alarms in all the towers and Currier Lower Main.

The flip side of the Currier Complex panels is that if any other tower has an alarm, Daniels, which is on the other side of the Lower Main, will not.

The reason we did not wire the Currier panels to trip Daniels' is as follows: if, for example, there was a working fire in Currier Lower Main kitchen area and we wired Currier Lower Main to trip the Daniels' alarm, we would be sending students from Daniels to the main egress of the complex--in which case they would have to pass through the working fire.

Our recommendation is to have a fire door between Daniels and Currier that would close in the event of a Currier fire alarm.

On Saturday, while still working on the new system, we installed a temporary wiring system so that if Currier has an alarm, Daniels will be appropriately warned, pending the fire door. I hope that this letter will put at ease the concerned Daniels' resident and all those uncertain of the Daniels' fire alarm protection. --Mark J. Connoly Harvard Fire Group