On the morning the fire broke out at 106 North East St., the building's alarms sounded -- but the system did not send a signal to a monitoring center that would have notified the fire department.
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HOLYOKE -- The fire alarm system at the North East Street apartment block where three people perished in a New Year's Day blaze was installed in 2011 and functioned properly at the time, according to documents obtained by The Republican and interviews with the owner of a city alarm company who did the work.
But the installer said the building's former management company cut him out of the monitoring and maintenance plan in 2012 as the company consolidated its service contracts, transferring the work to a firm that went out of business.
And on the morning the fire broke out at 106 North East St., according to state fire officials, the building's alarms sounded -- but the connection between the system and its remote monitoring center malfunctioned.
"What I put in worked and worked well -- worked fine -- but then I was out of the picture," said Target Alarm Systems owner Brian W. O'Connor, who was listed on a February 2011 permit application for the installation.
Brian W. O'Connor, owner of Holyoke-based Target Alarm Systems, stands for a portrait on Westfield Road in Holyoke Monday, Jan. 9, 2017. O'Connor installed the alarm system at 106 North East St., where three people died in a New Year's Day fire -- but O'Connor's company has not been responsible for the system's monitoring and maintenance since 2012.Greg Saulmon / The Republican
The application was among a number of Holyoke Building Department documents obtained by The Republican through a public records request.
The alarm system came to the forefront when the state fire marshal's office issued a Jan. 4 press release following an announcement of the fire's cause, which investigators traced to a faulty electrical outlet in a third-floor unit. The fire marshal's written statement said the building's fire alarm "appears not to have been operating properly."
Asked to clarify that statement, Department of Fire Services spokeswoman Jennifer Mieth confirmed in an email Monday that alarms sounded within the building. But, she added, "the connection between the building's alarm system and the monitoring company was not functioning properly."
Mieth said the system was monitored by a third-party company, with no direct connection to the city's fire department. Such a direct connection is not required under state law, she said.
Investigators have not determined why the system malfunctioned, and Mieth said a code compliance investigation is ongoing.
The owner of the building's current management company has not responded to requests for comment.
How the system worked
A lifelong Holyoke resident, O'Connor has been installing alarm systems since the 1970s. He gets so many referrals for work, he said, that he hasn't had to print a business card since 1984.
"I live in Holyoke," he said. "I'll probably die in Holyoke."
The system O'Connor installed at the apartment block at 106 North East and 49 East Dwight streets consisted of four-dozen individual alarm units -- from hallway smoke detectors to lobby pull-stations, according to documentation he provided to The Republican.
A diagram provided by Target Alarm Systems Owner Brian O'Connor shows the layout of the smoke detectors and horn / strobe units on each floor of 106 North East St. in Holyoke. Click to enlarge.Greg Saulmon | gsaulmon@repub.com
A diagram of the North East Street side of the building shows a smoke detector on each floor's landing, with a "horn / strobe" unit nearby. About 15 feet down each hallway, outside what would be the door to the "C" unit on each floor, was another detector. Building and fire codes require one smoke detector for every 30-foot-by-30-foot space, O'Connor explained, and the layout of the North East Street system exceeded that requirement.
There was a carbon monoxide detector and seven additional smoke detectors in the basement, including one next to the system's Fire-Lite 9200UDLS control panel. The control panel was "addressable" -- programmed not only to send a notification to the monitoring company when a detector trips, but to pinpoint exactly which detector in the building had activated.
On the East Dwight Street side of the block, O'Connor installed a smoke detector and horn / strobe unit on every stairway landing, where the entryways to each floor's apartments were clustered.
There were pull-stations in both lobbies, and a strobe light mounted 10 feet above the sidewalk on the North East Street side.
The system's purpose was twofold: to alert residents about a fire, and to alert the fire department.
When any of the system smoke detectors are activated, the control panel sends a signal out -- every horn in the building sounds, and every strobe flashes. The system detectors are distinct from smoke alarms in individual apartments, which sound only within the unit -- a guard against a full building evacuation over burnt toast.
At the same time a system detector goes off, the control panel sends a signal via phone lines to a "central station" -- a third-party call center that monitors the system.
"The one I use monitors 800,000 buildings," O'Connor said, noting that large central stations typically have backup locations to ensure continuity of service.
The central station, in turn, is required to relay the information to the local fire department. Systems with a direct connection to a local fire department are less frequently chosen by building owners, O'Connor said, adding that he prefers systems that rely on third-party monitoring companies.
"I like it because it's more thorough," he said of the type of system installed at 106 North East St.
Radio box systems that link a building directly to a fire department don't have the capability to offer firefighters information about where in a large building alarms have been triggered. And, radio box systems are more expensive to install and maintain, O'Connor said.
"It takes a smidge longer, but they're going with extremely precise information," he said of firefighters responding to a call.
To illustrate how an addressable system works, O'Connor offered a printout of the log generated by the monitoring company in the wake of a July 3, 2016 fire at High and Appleton streets in Holyoke. The document shows the sequence beginning with the activation of a smoke detector on a fourth-floor landing.
The next entries show the monitoring company's call to the Holyoke Fire Department, followed by the activation of additional detectors: a third floor apartment, a fourth floor hallway.
In just over a minute, some detectors begin relaying "trouble" alerts -- meaning, O'Connor explained, the wiring in the detector has melted and the unit was no longer communicating with the control panel.
Sophisticated alarm systems include several safeguards against failure.
A "Site Event History" document shows a log of smoke detector activations, calls to the Holyoke Fire Department, and other alarm system events during a July 3, 2016 fire at High and Appleton streets in Holyoke.Greg Saulmon / The Republican
The North East Street system was "fully supervised." Any change in status to one of the components, such as the removal of a hallway smoke detector or low voltage on a backup battery, would trigger an alert to the central station and a service call to the alarm company.
Another measure involved daily, automatic system tests. Every 24 hours, the system sent a test signal over one of its two phone lines. Then, 30 minutes later, it tested the other. Information about a failed test would be relayed to a landlord and alarm company, triggering a maintenance call.
Installers can also check on a system's status remotely. To demonstrate, O'Connor pulled up an app on his iPhone to check two of his systems. A plain text interface showed the most recent pings to the central station, the time and whether they'd transmitted successfully.
The fact that the system tested itself so regularly leaves open the questions of when the system's connection began to fail, and why.
O'Connor said a state fire official told him last week the company that took over his maintenance and monitoring duties had gone out of business -- but that another company picked up the account.
It was not immediately clear, though, what alarm company held the account at the time of the fire.
The inspection process
In general, Mieth said, multi-family buildings in Massachusetts are required to have a smoke detection and alarm system. A 1989 law retroactively mandated fire alarms in residential buildings with six or more units built before 1975.
Sprinkler requirements are only triggered when a building undergoes a significant renovation. City records show the last permits for major work on 106 North East St. were a permit for an elevator installation in 1973, and for $125,000 in rehab work in 1974.
The 2011 alarm system installation at 106 North East St., meanwhile, was completed in the months before Naviah Investments, headed by Brookline resident Irshad Sideeka, closed on a purchase of the building and several other residential properties in the city.
City Building Inspector Damian J. Cote said that, at the time of the installation, the city's electrical inspector would have signed off on the wiring, and the fire department would have tested the system as a whole.
O'Connor provided an additional permit application signed by former Holyoke Fire Department Capt. Joseph E. Beaulieu on Feb. 16, 2011. In a section listing restrictions for the permit, typed text reads: "Responsible for notification to Fire Department prior to completion of all installations." That note is accompanied by handwritten text that reads, "Test system upon completion."
Cote said that after he began his tenure as building inspector in 2012 -- over a year after the North East Street installation -- he changed the city's policy on fire alarm installations to require an application for a building permit in addition to an electrical permit.
"The final inspection on alarm systems, suppression systems, and any other active fire protection systems are completed by both a building inspector and a fire inspector," Cote wrote in an email.
City electrical inspector Thomas Sullivan, who was not serving in his current position in 2011, wrote in an email this week that he could not find documentation of a final inspection by his office of the system at 106 North East St. And an inspection of the rough work, he wrote, would not have been required.
"It is the property owner and the licensed contractor's responsibility to make the building accessible to and available, for electrical inspection as well as for final signoff and testing by the Fire Department," he wrote.
O'Connor did not have a copy of any paperwork for the fire department's final test of the system at the end of the work -- but, he said: "The sale could not have gone through without fire signing off."
After the initial installation, though, the city's responsibility ends -- and it's up to building owners to ensure a system continues to function properly.
"Owners are required to maintain the systems and have them annually inspected by a fire alarm company," Mieth said. "There is no requirement for ongoing inspections by the fire or building departments."
Mieth's statement echoed O'Connor, who also explained that the responsibility to have a system tested each year by the alarm company resides with a building owner or management company.
"What people don't realize -- if you own a building, it's not on them," he said of city departments. "It's up to you to maintain the system."
In the years following the installation and the building's sale, the switch in alarm system companies wasn't the only change at 106 North East St.
Building Department records obtained by The Republican show permits for plumbing work at the building taken out by Holyoke-based Atlas Property Management as recently as 2012.
But when called for comment Monday, a representative said Atlas began operating as Blue House Property Management about three years ago, and that it no longer managed the building.
The representative said Raquel E. Rodriguez, of Springfield -- listed on the website atlaspropmanagement.com as "Rentals Manager" and described in previous news reports on the fire as the building's property manager -- was no longer with the company, and that she was managing the building under a new firm.
State records show Rodriguez formed a company called Works Management Services in July 2014. The Works Management website lists 106 North East St. and several other Naviah-owned properties as clients.
Rodriguez did not return phone messages left by The Republican on Monday and Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning in Springfield, a woman who answered the door at a Nottingham Street home listed in state filings as the Works Management Services place of business told an editor, "You must have the wrong address."
City records list Rodriguez as the home's owner. On a porch at the home, her name was written on a large piece of styrofoam sitting among a pile of packaging materials.
The scene of the Jan. 1, 2017 fire at 106 North East St.Dave Canton / The Republican
A matter of timing
To understand how fire moves through a building, O'Connor said, imagine flipping the structure upside-down and pouring water into it. The liquid rushes to fill all the available space -- sometimes flowing sideways or even briefly against gravity as it exhausts every void and finds new paths.
Now, flip the building back over: a fire, in its pursuit of fuel and oxygen, might travel up the inside of a wall, race horizontally through gaps above a drop ceiling, and shoot back down the space inside another wall if it hits a dead-end.
Under the walls and drop ceilings of a building like 106 North East St. are a number of combustible materials, from old plaster and lath to thick cobwebs to decades-old, dried-out rafters. The fire follows the fuel, bursting into other hallways and apartments.
People don't realize, O'Connor said, that once a fire begins its fast march through a building, "You're on your own until the fire department gets there."
It's also likely, he said, that in a daytime fire people will react before an alarm system does.
"There's the strong possibility, especially in the daytime, with so many people, that you will in fact see smoke before the detector will react," O'Connor said. In that case, the lobby pull-stations are particularly important: they offer a notification option that's potentially as fast as dialing 911.
As debate continues in Holyoke over the practice of periodically taking the department's Engine 2 out of service -- a measure designed to trim overtime costs known as a "brownout" -- O'Connor said he believes the additional downtown engine would have made a difference in the New Year's Day response and rescues.
He also said he raised the issue of brownouts at a December neighborhood meeting with city councilors, held at Mrs. Mitchell's Kitchen on Westfield Road.
"People don't understand what that takes away," he said of the practice.
But city officials, including Mayor Alex B. Morse and Holyoke Fire Chief John A. Pond did not respond to questions, have maintained that delays in notifying the fire department of the blaze were the main contributors to the tragedy. The out-of-service engine was not a factor in the loss of life, they have said.
Over the course of two interviews with The Republican, O'Connor repeatedly emphasized that a fire -- especially a big one -- doesn't allow residents much time to get out.
"After five minutes, forget it," he said. "You're not saving anybody. Not in that building."
