Winter Storms and Fire Safety: What Puget Sound Managers Should Expect

Our call volume is not evenly distributed across the year. It spikes with the first hard freeze and again with the first sustained windstorm outage. Both events take fire protection systems offline at exactly the moment fire risk in buildings increases.

Freeze damage to wet systems

Sprinkler piping in unheated attics, parking garages, and exterior stairwells is the most common freeze casualty in the Puget Sound. A single broken head can drain a riser and put an entire building into impairment for days while parts are sourced.

Power outages cut both ways

An extended outage can exhaust fire alarm panel batteries and disable fire pumps while simultaneously driving residents toward space heaters, candles, and improvised cooking. That is the highest-risk combination we see all year.

Pre-season checklist

• Verify heat and insulation in every space containing wet sprinkler piping
• Confirm fire alarm panel battery age and replace anything near end of life
• Test the fire pump and generator under load before the season
• Pre-establish a fire watch vendor relationship so dispatch is a phone call, not a procurement exercise
• Send residents a seasonal notice on heater and candle safety

The Puget Sound winter pattern, month by month

November brings the first sustained windstorms and the outage calls that follow them. December and January bring the hard freezes that break sprinkler piping in unheated attics, garages, and exterior stairwells. February is when we see the compounding failures — a building already running on a temporary repair loses power, or a panel with aged batteries finally fails during the second outage of the month.

March and April are the quiet window, and they are when the work that prevents next winter should be scheduled. Fire pump load tests, generator service, battery replacement, and heat tracing repairs are all far cheaper in April than during a February impairment.

Freeze damage in the buildings we see it most

• Garden-style apartments with wet piping in unheated attic spaces above the top floor
• Parking garages and exterior breezeway stairwells with exposed sprinkler branch lines
• Vacant tenant spaces where heat was shut off to save utility cost
• Attic and soffit runs in older buildings where insulation has settled away from the pipe
• Backflow and riser rooms with a propped exterior door left open by a contractor

Power outages: what fails, and in what order

A fire alarm panel on healthy batteries typically carries 24 hours of standby and a short alarm load. Aged batteries can fail in a few hours, which is why an outage that a building survived last winter can put it into impairment this winter. Fire pumps stop unless a generator picks them up, elevator recall and smoke control drop out, and access control can fail in a way that locks or unlocks egress doors incorrectly.

Meanwhile the risk inside the building rises. Space heaters, candles, grills brought indoors, and improvised cooking are exactly what fills the hours of a long outage. That combination — reduced detection and increased ignition — is why our December call volume looks nothing like our June call volume.

Storm-day sequence for property managers

When the outage starts, work in this order:

• Check the fire alarm panel for trouble and AC-loss conditions, and note the time
• Confirm whether the fire pump transferred to generator, and whether the generator is running under load
• Notify the fire department of any impairment discovered, using the local impairment reporting process
• Dispatch fire watch coverage as soon as the impairment is confirmed, not after the utility gives a restoration estimate
• Tell occupants how they will be warned while detection is offline, and post notices at elevators and stairwells
• Walk egress paths for storm debris, ice, and doors held open or failed shut
• Log the restoration time and the system test when power and protection return

Line up coverage before November

The hardest night of the year to find a compliant fire watch is the night everyone needs one. Establishing the vendor relationship in advance turns a storm-night impairment into a phone call rather than a procurement exercise — our dispatch center answers 24 hours a day at (206) 657-6227.