Month: February 2015

On Feb. 22 in a Long Island, N.Y. mall, 26 people were sickened at a Legal Sea Foods restaurant and the 55-year-old restaurant manager died after being poisoned by the odorless, invisible gas. The cause was a leaky flue pipe in the water heater, according to CNN.

Just a day later, 21 people suffered carbon monoxide poisoning at a resort in Ogunquit, Maine. Fire Chief Mark O’Brien told the Portland Press Herald newspaper that the cause of the leak was a faulty ventilation pipe. He said tests at the InnSeason Resorts–The Falls at Ogunquit detected high levels of CO. “We could potentially have had 21 deaths here,” O’Brien told the paper.

A 2012 Maine law requires any new single-family dwelling, hotel, motel, inn, bed and breakfast, fraternity or sorority house, and dormitory to have CO detectors installed, the paper said. But the law has an exemption for homes or businesses that were constructed before Aug. 1, 2012, unless the building since then has been restored or converted to those uses. The resort in Ogunquit, built more than 20 years ago, wasn’t required to have CO detectors under the law, the paper reported.

The incident, in which seven of the inn’s guests were so sick they had to be hospitalized, has resulted in calls in Maine to expand the law to cover buildings that currently are exempted. However, the hospitality industry has raised concerns about the cost of retrofitting hotel rooms, according to the paper.

Rich Brobst Jr., president of the Maine Burglar & Fire Alarm Association and a NICET IV-level master electrician with Falmouth, Maine-based Protection Professionals, told SSN he supports expanding the law, but in a way “that makes sense” and is more cost effective.

“Don’t bother putting CO detection everywhere in the building, put it where it’s going to be an issue [near a combustion device],” Brobst advised.

He said he’d like to see Maine mandate the devices be in places like furnace rooms instead of bedrooms or hallways outside of bedrooms.

“If you have a carbon monoxide issue in the furnace room, it’s not going to affect anybody in the building until it permeates into one of the apartments,” he said. It’s better to have a detector located where it will sound as soon as the gas is emitted from a combustion source.

And professional monitoring of CO devices is also vital, Brobst said. He said that if a detector goes off in a furnace room, typically “a facility’s manager would go check out the sound, but there’s nothing that individual can do and if they go into this room that’s toxic, they may end up on the floor.”

But a central station can call the fire department, which has the equipment to detect high levels of carbon monoxide and the knowledge of how to deal with it.

In the Long Island mall CO incident, firefighters found the restaurant manager, Steven Nelson, unconscious in the basement of the restaurant, CNN reported.

The restaurant didn’t have a CO detector because state law only requires them in commercial establishments where people sleep, according to CNN. There are now calls in the state to expand the law to cover other types of businesses.

Bob Williams, president of Long Island-based Briscoe Protective Systems, told SSN in an email interview, “It’s a shame to think that even a $20 battery-operated CO detector could have alerted the manager of the impending danger before it became a toxic level.”

He added, “I am definitely in favor of mandating the requirement s for these detectors in commercial occupancies, but cost is always a deterrent factor especially with existing commercial fire alarms systems that need to retrofitted to accept these detectors.”

Williams advised, “At a minimum, hardwired AC-powered CO detectors with battery backup should be required to be installed in all existing commercial buildings, and new or significantly renovated buildings should have interconnected system detectors.”

 

an original version of this story appears in securitysystemnews.com

 

Titan Alarm has partnered with DSX Access Systems Inc. to offer advanced security and access control systems for businesses in Arizona.

Applications

Virtual Outputs
Virtual Outputs in the WinDSX system are outputs that do not physically exist but can be programmed in the same manner as any Relay Output in the system. Virtual Outputs can be used for Time Zone control, linking, process control, bell schedules, fail safe timers and many more applications.

First Man In
First Man In can be implemented to prevent doors that normally unlock on a schedule from unlocking when weather or other conditions prevent anyone from traveling to or occupying the location or building. The Time Zone that normally unlocks the door is overridden until a card is first used to gain access to the building. This could be a regular or manager assigned card at any reader or a particular one.

Manager First
Manager First can be used to keep other subordinate issued cards from gaining access to the building when the manager is not on site. Certain Access Levels would be disabled until a manager arrives and uses their card thereby enabling the Access Levels of the subordinates.

Two Man Rule
The Two Man Rule requires that two different cardholders use their card before they can gain access to a door. This could be set up for any two card holders or it could be taken a step farther so that a card holder from Group A and one from Group B must both use their card for the door to unlock.

Access Level Control
Access Level Control can restrict and/or change Access Levels on the card population without the need for lengthy downloads. This can be done for card control at a university that needs to shut off or restrict access to its student population during the holidays and will support different schedule requirements for the different classes of the student population. It can also be used in Threat Level Management to change the accessibility of the card holders.

Hazmat Lockdown
Today many Hospitals, health care agencies, and municipalities are faced with contingency planning for Hazmat Emergencies. Hazmat Lockdown accommodates the quick lockdown of a system required for Hazmat alerts. The Lockdowns occur without the need of programming or lengthy downloads. Hazmat Lockdowns will typically secure all the doors in an area or the entire facility not allowing anyone or just particular personnel access in or out.

Emergency Lockdowns
With the DSX system, doors can quickly be locked down from the keyboard, an external button, or even a card read. Access can be prevented or just limited to a select few card holders. This lockdown action can be custom fit to the particular needs of the customer.

Threat Level Management
With a click of a mouse, press of a button, or presentation of a Card, the system can be instantly reconfigured to coincide with the Homeland Security Advisory System and meet any heightened security requirements.

With a single action doors can be locked down, alarm points armed, readers disabled, access levels restricted, image recall invoked and more. The system can be made incrementally more secure with each action and just as quickly put back to normal. Components of the DSX system can be individually enabled or disabled to create the environment the situation requires.

DSX Threat Level Management can be customized to meet the specific needs of each customer.


Time Zone Control
Time Zone Control can quickly disable one Time Zone and/or enable another through Time Zone Linking. There are times when an application calls for multiple schedules to control cards or door locks with the ability to switch from one schedule to another without any programming or Time Zone reassignment. This action could be a manager card being used at a reader that switches a door from one locking schedule (Time Zone) to another or the clicking on an Output Icon in the Workstation program.

JetWay Extended Bypass
Airports sometimes require a means to discreetly bypass a door for more than a normal amount of time. When loading or unloading passengers the door can be bypassed for an extended amount of time by simply presenting the card twice to that reader. The door always locks as soon as it is closed. This ability is configurable by door and by card holder. It also works with Card+PIN readers.

Building Automation
This paper shows an over view of how WinDSX can be integrated into a single occupant or multitenant property at various levels with different systems.

Separate Alarm Outputs
This application shows a way to separate Door Forced from Door Held Open Alarms where the alarms are being transmitted offsite.

Clean Room Annunciation
In environments where a user wants to be aware that any two doors are open in an area. This application can be more than 2 doors and will provide an annunciation or lockout when two doors of concern are opened at the same time.

Man Trap
High Security Areas sometimes require a man trap application where there are typically two doors in a holding area or vestibule outside of a sensitive room. One door leads to the high security area while the other door leads to the non secured area. The application mandates that the two doors cannot be open or even unlocked at the same time. One door must shut and lock before the other door can unlock and open.

Occupancy Limit
An Occupancy Limit can be imposed on rooms where the number of people in the room have to be kept to a maximum number. Using a simple counter relay combined with linking this application is simple.

 

Learn More About Access Control

• Should I Upgrade My Access Control System?
• What is Access Control?

Updated by Titan Alarm on November 2, 2018.