Suburban Fire Alarm Issues Lead To Extra Fire Crews On Scene

CHICAGO (CBS) – Alarm Detection Systems was prompted Tuesday night to contact local fire departments after their radio network has been facing technical problems, leading to intermittent outages.

The company has recently been facing technical problems, but Tuesday night the issue reached such a level to alert local fire departments, so they do not conduct alarms tests as ADS work to fix the problem.

Alarm Detection Systems Corporate Counsel Mark Bonifas said it's not clear how many of their 30,000 customers across Chicagoland are affected.

Bonifas told customers to call 911 if they have an emergency and not to rely solely on their alarms.

He blamed the technical issue on the failure of the AES mesh radio network that ADS uses to notify fire departments.

Mark Puknaitis, Naperville Fire Chief, said since they found out Wednesday about the outages, they are sending extra crews to handle calls since they are unsure how serious they may be.

Puknaitis is concerned about delays getting to the city's 911 dispatch center and said seconds matter in his line of work.

ADS is working around the clock to fix the problem and have notified customers. Bonifas said the outages are intermittent and not confined to a geographic area.