It has been brought to our attention that many personnel are concerned about the performance of the Fire Angel smoke alarms provided through On Line ordering (OLO). We take this issue very seriously and therefore provide the following advice.

Background

Home Fire Safety Visits are a key risk reduction strategy to help keep our communities safe. The Operational Leadership Team has agreed that this strategy needs to continue. Over the last three years we have installed more than 35,000 long life photoelectric alarms into at-risk homes across New Zealand.

What is the issue?

A small percentage of faulting alarms have been returned to us. While the percentage is small it is not insignificant for a life safety device. When the alarm faults, it enters low battery mode. The National Risk Reduction Group has been assured, while in low battery mode, the alarm will still activate in the presence of smoke.

Some of the reasons alarms fault include: dust, debris, moisture in the alarm chamber, and conditions outside of the manufactures guidelines.

If you are called back to a home to check on a faulting Fire Angel smoke alarm please first confirm the alarm has been maintained. Some of the Fire Angel alarms may have been installed for up to 5 years and there may be need to remind owners of the need to dust or vacuum their smoke alarm.

We appreciate some of you have felt frustrated with the lack of information about this issue while we attempted to establish how much of problem existed.  We apologise for the inconvenience.

What’s happening for the future?

We have been working closely with the importers and they have agreed to replace every faulting smoke alarm. The process for returning faulting alarms can be found here.

While we understand returning to homes to replace faulting alarms impacts on your time, it is important we maintain public confidence and safety by doing this. These visits can be recorded as a Home Fire Safety Visit.

Fire and Emergency NZ will soon be seeking tenders for the continued supply of smoke alarms to support the Home Fire Safety Visit strategy. As part of this process we are evaluating the alarms available to ensure we get the most suitable product for our market. This should be a seamless process and you should continue to order smoke alarms as necessary through the OLO process.

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