01 / Fire watch
Fire watch
Continuous fire watch rounds while your alarm or sprinklers are down.
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Guide
What fire watch involves while your system is down.
A plain explanation of what happens when a building needs a fire watch.
Why buildings need a fire watch.
Fire alarms and sprinklers fail, and sometimes they’re shut down on purpose for repairs or testing. While they’re out, a person has to do the job the system normally does: notice a fire early and get people out.
Whether a fire watch is required, and for how long, is set by your fire protection contractor and the local fire authority. Our part is the officer and the timed log.
What the officer does.
A fire watch officer keeps moving through every affected area on a set route. They look and smell for smoke, check for heat and hazards, keep exits and hallways clear and know exactly how to raise the alarm and call for help.
Unlike a regular security post, fire watch is focused on one thing. The officer isn’t checking people in or answering questions at the desk.
How the log works.
Every round goes into a timed log: when it started, which areas were checked and anything the officer noticed. The log stays on site so your contractor, your property team and any inspector can see it.
We keep timed logs on all of our services, but on fire watch the log is the record that the building was watched.
How long it lasts.
Fire watch runs until the system is restored and signed off. That might be one night, a weekend or several weeks during a renovation. Coverage can be overnight or around the clock.
Getting it started.
Call us as soon as you know a system is down. Fire watch often comes up with little warning, and we’ll move quickly to set it up.
Situations that call for it in Salinas
Fire watch comes up in all kinds of buildings. A cold storage plant drains a sprinkler line to repair it. An office building has its alarm panel replaced during a tenant remodel. An apartment complex loses its fire alarm after a power problem and needs someone walking the halls until the technician returns. A packing house schedules welding during the off-season shutdown.
Each one needs the same basic thing: an officer moving through the affected areas on a steady route, with every round written down. What changes is the route itself, which follows the floors, freezer rooms or separate buildings the outage touches.
Preparing residents, staff and access
People notice an officer walking the halls at two in the morning. A short notice in the lobby or an email to staff saying a fire watch is in place heads off a lot of questions. Make sure the officer has keys or codes for every affected area, including mechanical rooms and stairwells, so no part of the route gets skipped.
Hand over a contact list too: your property manager, the fire protection contractor and whoever should hear first if something is found. Those names go into the post orders before the first round begins, so the officer never has to hunt for a phone number mid-shift.
When the system is back
Once the contractor restores the system, tell us the time it was signed off, so the final round and the end of the watch go into the log. If the outage exposed other gaps, such as a building that now sits empty or a renovation still under way, the watch can roll straight into temporary security on the same month-to-month terms. The fire watch service page covers setup and coverage hours.
A few useful answers
Quick answers.
Can a regular security guard also do fire watch?
On a small site sometimes, but usually fire watch needs its own officer so the rounds aren’t interrupted.
Do you keep the log for us?
The log stays on site and is yours when the watch ends.
Can one fire watch cover several buildings on the same property?
Yes. The route is built around every building and floor the outage affects, and each round is logged by area.
Who should call you, the property manager or the contractor?
Either one. Whoever knows which system is down and which areas are affected can get the watch set up.
Services
Services this guide covers
02 / Short notice
Temporary security guards
Short-notice, overnight and 24-hour coverage with no long contract.
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