The report released this week is a follow-up to an earlier report that singled out Cabrillo as one of 12 districts that should update its alarm system. On Monday, the grand jury praised the district for “promptly taking action to upgrade their school fire alarm system.”
School officials responded to the initial grand jury report, saying they were including updated alarm systems as part of new construction at Cunha Intermediate School. They say there is no money to update systems elsewhere in the district but note existing systems meet code now.
 Students leave Hatch Elementary School at the end of another day on Monday. On their way out the door, they file past a classic, wall-mounted fire alarm. |
The grand jury report suggested that the manual fire-alarm systems are an antiquated emergency tool. It noted that schools with manual systems often rely on neighborhood residents to report fires during the long periods when a campus is closed.
Since the original report was released last year, Cabrillo schools have laid off administrative and classified staff and made other cuts to cope with reductions from the state.
Superintendent Rob Gaskill said upgrading the school fire system wasn’t a priority because the current fire equipment at all campuses is up to code.
“We are not in a financial position to do so.” Gaskill wrote in an e-mail. “My hunch is that this is a ‘boilerplate’ letter that the grand jury may have sent out to a number of districts.”
The grand jury report recommended school districts adopt newer fire alarms, particularly automatic systems that will alert fire officials even when a school campus is vacant, such as the weekends or the summer vacation period.
Gaskill said the district has no plans to purchase new fire systems when it is already facing the threat of more layoffs in the coming months.
Few school districts with older fire systems will spend the money to upgrade when their current fire alarms are compliant with regulations, said San Mateo County Deputy Fire Marshal Marc Colbert.
“I’ve been seeing the automatic systems only in the new schools,” he said. “It’s hard to get a school district during a budget crunch to update an old system.”
Despite their cost, Colbert said automatic fire systems are a significant improvement over older manual alarms. Newer fire systems can detect heat or smoke and automatically signal fire authorities whenever there might be a problem. Those fire systems are known to occasionally send out false alarms, but Colbert said that was better than the alternative.
“If you look at the benefit of getting a fire quickly reported, that outweighs the inconvenience of a (false alarm),” he said. “And the technology is improving.”
Colbert could not recall a local example when automatic alarms made a significant improvement over manual systems.
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