City Howl Help Desk: Fire alarm blares for 11 days near South Street

THE Cocktail Lounge was shuttered, but it was still plenty noisy.

The blare from a fire alarm began the weekend of Hurricane Irene, and never stopped. During the day, the sound was drowned out by the din of South Street. But even South Street is supposed to grow quiet eventually.

The bar has been closed ever since resident Jim Murphy moved to Gaskill Street near South three years ago. Once the alarm started, Murphy tried to identify the owner through online tax records but had no luck. So he and his neighbors called 3-1-1 and were told to call the police.

The police couldn't help, either. But they did have some advice: Call the precinct every day if the alarm doesn't stop and keep reporting the problem. (If this sounds crazy, you're not alone. We'll get back to this in a bit.)

After 11 days of listening to the alarm, Murphy called us from the scene of the racket.

"I don't know if you can hear it, but ... ," he began. Oh, we could hear it. We could also hear Murphy's complaint loud and clear: Eleven days of this and not one person in the city could help?

BLISSFUL SILENCE: The Fire Department turned off the alarm the same day Murphy called us. Our partners at Fox29 called them, and they said it was the first they'd heard of the problem.

Still, we had to wonder why it took a call from the press to turn off an alarm that blared for 11 days - and why Murphy and his neighbors were given so much unhelpful information.

We asked around, and it turns out it's not really anyone's responsibility to turn off nuisance alarms.

The Health Department's Air Management Services can (and did) fine the owner for noise violations. Owners can also be hit with a $75 fine for every false alarm after two in a year. But the fines didn't help Murphy and his sleep-deprived neighbors.

The police can check out the property to make sure it's safe, spokeswoman Officer Jillian Russell said, but unless the property is open, officers can't enter. Officers also try to identify the person in whose name the alarm is registered, but if they can't contact that person, neighbors are out of luck.

Why were neighbors told to call the police every day? Russell said it was a safety precaution. If someone reports the false alarm every day, an officer can go out every day (to make sure the alarm isn't attracting crime, we guess). So, the police said, in essence, call us every day - but even if you do, we won't turn the alarm off.

The Fire Department isn't supposed to turn off alarms, either.

Capt. Jeffrey Thompson said that, in response to a fire alarm, firefighters will make sure there's nothing wrong, but can't do anything if no one lets them in. It's the owner's job to turn it off, he said.

We agree. But clearly the owner was nowhere to be found. And, Thompson told us, the alarm wasn't registered. (This can also result in a fine.)

On the 11th day, after Fox called, a firefighter made a "judgment call," Thompson said, and broke in to turn off the alarm. Thompson said it was such an "abnormal situation" that it called for action.

We think it's an even more abnormal situation that no one in the city took it on themselves to try to find a solution to the problem earlier. Help Desk understands there's no protocol for shutting off malfunctioning alarms in abandoned buildings (Licenses & Inspections spokeswoman Maura Kennedy said she'd never heard of this happening before), but couldn't someone have said, "This is crazy! Let me try to figure out who can help you"?

Regardless, Murphy was pleased. "Silence, or as much silence as you get at 5th and South, has once again descended on the neighborhood," he wrote to us.

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