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Expect to pay a fine in Terrebonne Parish if your fire alarm falsely notifies the fire department three or more times.
In a 5-1 vote, the Terrebonne Parish Council approved an ordinance charging homeowners or businesses $100 on the fourth false alarm. The fine increases to $200 for the fifth offense; subsequent offenses will be fined $400 each.
“It is not a moneymaking deal. We do not begin collecting fees until the fourth call for false alarms,” Schriever Fire Department Chief Ken Pitre said. “It is a proactive method to reduce the number of calls. We are saving the taxpayers money because taxpayers fund us.”
A spike in false fire alarms has taken a toll on Pitre’s department.
“We had one agency that was called 12 times in two years. It was 20 miles round trip. We got to a point where we just ran a regular vehicle out there to check,” he said. “If it were burning, it would take longer to get all of the trucks there.
“You become complacent because you get used to the false alarms.”
Pitre said the Schriever department has responded to 286 service calls this year and expects to reach more than 300.
“Schriever only has 11,200 people, but I have roughly 40,000 cars passing each day through Schriever, so that is a lot of wrecks,” the fire chief said. “With more businesses, that is more trucks going out.
“We have to have a mechanism to fix that to keep our trucks off the road. It is not that we don’t want to go, but it is a liability every time you put a truck on the road for nothing.”
Several departments opted out of the ordinance – Bayou Black, Bayou Blue, Village East and Bayou Dularge.
Bayou Dularge Fire Chief Quint Liner Sr. said taxpayers should not be penalized for faulty systems.
“My community pays 23 mills to the fire department. We are one of the highest collectors in the parish because we do not have a ton of oil companies in our area. If they are going to pay 23 mills and give us the money we need, why would I penalize them for their alarm system not working? It is the alarm companies that should be penalized, not the people,” he said.
What constitutes a false alarm also proved to be a concern for Liner and other fire chiefs.
“When we had our chiefs meeting, we were told to describe a false alarm and every chief had a different answer,” Liner said. “One chief said if you cook an egg and the alarm goes off, then that is a false alarm. The alarm did its job. That is not a false alarm. It went off. A false alarm is when the system goes off by itself for no reason.”
Although Bayou Dularge has only had three false alarms this year, Liner is not sure he would change because he feels it is his job to respond to all calls.
“They pay for this community to have a 24-hour man on call at the station. Well, get up and do your job. People are complaining about having to get up in the middle of the night and go to the same buildings or houses,” Liner said. “Some of them complain about having a second job because they are not paid enough. That is not my problem.”
Councilman John Navy, who abstained from the vote along with Councilwomen Beryl Amedee and Arlanda Williams, suggested the ordinance is unconstitutional.
“An ordinance is an ordinance and a law is a law. If you want to pick out particular areas, then do that. When you create a parishwide ordinance that isn’t applied to all, I am going to stick to that being portrayed as unconstitutional,” Navy said. “I am no attorney, but to me, that is like putting stop signs or red lights in one district and then not doing it for other districts or just not enforcing them fairly by district.”
Navy is not happy with the idea of having fire departments decide what goes on in Terrebonne Parish.
“Four of the departments opted out, but I do not feel like they should have had a choice. Now you have the fire districts dictating to the parish what laws are going to be enforced. That is crazy,” he said.
Councilman Cpt. Greg Hood Sr., who cast the lone vote against the measure, agreed that the fire departments should not be able to dictate to the parish what they are or are not going to do regarding ordinances; however, he lauds the ordinance’s efficiency.
“This will give people better use of their tax dollars because law enforcement won’t be tied down at false alarms,” Hood said. “It will help the public get up and start getting their alarms fixed.”
Hood served as a police officer for more than 30 years and understands the frustration of responding to false alarms.
“When I was a police officer and responding to calls, it was so aggravating to go to the same alarm four, five or six times knowing that you have to treat it as a true alarm,” he said. “It just ties up units because you have to wait for the key holder.”
Councilmen Russell “Red” Hornsby, Dirk Guidry, Christa Duplantis-Prather, Danny Babin and Pete Lambert voted in favor of the fines.
— michael@rushing-media.com
Chief Ken Pitre of the Schriever Fire Department was one of the main advocates for the excessive alarm ordinance after one company had 12 false alarms in two years.
