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there's young, hunky electricians strolling in and out and in and out and in and out of my studio apartment, installing heat detectors today. One detector inside each entrance to the apartment, which in my case is a studio—one main room with a tiny bathroom and a small kitchen appended. Those, plus my smoke detectors makes a total of four detectors in one and a half rooms. This is the fifth day men with wires (not counting the ones I invited) have come to surround me with various combustion detection and alarm devices. I feel as overprotected as 'precedent' Bush—it would not be a stretch to say I am as important.
I even have a smoke detector in my kitchen—over the stove! That's my favorite. She and I speak often. She spends most days unplugged and relieved of her battery (she is both hardwired and battery powered—talk about overkill) and resting quietly and un-annoyingly in my closet. The Massachusetts Fire Safety Code requires a smoke detector outside the bedroom, and until last month that requirement was satisfied by the detector which was installed, according to their specific directions to satisfy that requirement, centered on the ceiling above me where I write this. But in their unknowable wisdom they chose to require another detector in the kitchen. They could have also required one in the bathroom as well, so maybe I should thank them for their restraint. Actually, I cook less often than I shower (although they could not have known this) so the kitchen was the lesser of the two stupidities. In the kitchen there's no danger of me trying to disconnect it while naked and dripping wet.
The least of all stupidities would have been to leave everything the way it has been for over 4 years—the way it is in other identical apartments which I have inspected myself as a fire fighter—one detector in the center of the studio. That is how the code was interpreted in the past. But in Worcester, when someone buys a group of rental properties for several cool million, there is always somebody else seeking an illegitimate share of the transaction, and using fire regulations as their excuse.
for example: In 1999, the building was inspected by the Worcester fire department, and passed that inspection. At that time my apartment had one smoke detector. Nobody was buying the building and nothing else was changing (like major renovations, which also require re-inspection). It was a routine re-inspection, and my one smoke detector was adequate then. However, when money started changing hands and one of the richest landlords in Worcester decided to sell and retire to Florida, my safety from fire suddenly became a major issue for the Worcester fire department. Their reinspection, required in Massachusetts for apartment buildings at their time of sale, identified an immediate need for heat detectors inside every entryway, and additional smoke detectors like the one three feet from my stove.
In fact, the only peril threatening me before these safety measures was the danger of cooking an egg without a 90 decible alarm shrieking at me (I am so grateful for that), and the danger of living in a place that looked like a home—instead I now live in a place that reminds me of the inside of one of Worcester's derelict triple-deckers given a new use as a rooming house, with electrical conduit layed on top of everything, even on the surface of a dropped ceiling; with surface mounted electrical junction boxes which gather conduit to themselves like the legs of Alaska King Crab; and with detectors, detectors everywhere, and not a smooth clean wall in sight.
this is the sympathy-soaked, over-supported fire department that apparently thinks it can get away with anything because it lost 6 men in December of 1999. Do the memory of those men honor, and clean-up your act. And if you won't hide the graft, then at least make them hide the wiring. Please?
using fire safety and life safety regulations for such frivolities as are apparent with these installations, not only weakens the effect, but cheapens the intent of the law. I was once an acolyte of the fire service, and I once persued fire prevention and protection with a religious fervor. I preached the gospel of smoke detectors, and I tried to help people use them and position them in their buildings so that they would work. I personally viewed the act of disabling a smoke detector as a potentially fatal and unconscionable act, and I fueled that belief with scenes from my own experience of lives lost and bodies burnt until indistinguishable from charred rubble, all for the lack of a detector's alarm.
But in my own home now (and there may be some Karma in this) I am unable to toast a piece of bread without triggering an ear-shattering alarm from my kitchen 'cook-detector'. Even as annoyed as I am with the dubious pretense which required its installation, and despite its ineffectiveness, and despite its unnecessary presence with an identical detector only 6 feet away, I still reach up and disconnect it with some trembling, and with memories of too many times when it—in another place and time—would have saved a life. The gospel of the smoke detector is so deeply ingrained in me that every time I reach up to shut off this false alarm, I feel like I am reaching up and shutting off the alarm that would have saved a life (or lives) at one of the fatal fires which I fought and extinguished—but lost anyway.
And I feel guilty all over again.
In the case of a studio apartment, the sleeping area is seperated from other areas of the structure by the common hallway. The requirement for a smoke detector outside "each seperate sleeping area" [The Massachusetts Comprehensive Fire Safety Code, 527 CMR 24.07(2)(a)6] is met by the smoke detector in the common hallway.
Additionally, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Fire Safety Code [527 CMR 24.07(2)(a)12] states "A smoke detector shall not be required to be located in or within six feet of a kitchen, cooking area, or garage."
I know this part is petty, but it makes me feel better for when I shut off the miscreant detector.
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