The Superior Express -

Last week cold weather strained the various fire safety systems installed in public buildings. It wasn't unusual for alarm systems to turn in false alarms. Sometimes water in fire sprinkler systems froze.

Both happened at the Superior Auditorium.

Sunday afternoon and again on Monday, the auditorium's automatic alarm systems signalled a false fire.

Sunday afternoon members of the Superior Volunteer Fire Department responded to the call and with members of the auditorium committee checked the building. They found nothing wrong.

Monday members of the committee were in the building when a second false alarm was sounded.

Other than being an inconvenience, the false alarms at first didn't appear to have cause a serious problem.

Then as the temperatures continued to climb, water began dripping from the lobby ceiling.

A sprinkler head above the lobby area had frozen and with the moderating temperatures it had thawed and began dripping. Why was there water in the head to freeze.

As the main portion of the building is not heated, it supposedly had a dry system which would be charged with water only if a fire broke out.

Apparently, the false alarm on Sunday caused at least a portion of the system to be charged with water. When the temperature fell Sunday night, that water froze. Climbing temperature on Monday thawed the frozen water.

The company which installed the alarm system was in town to check the system on Monday and the sprinkler company came from Omaha on Tuesday.

The sprinkler company reported lots of problems in Omaha where many companies had closed offices because of the COVID pandemic. Often times the heat in those offices had been turned down allowing the Polar Vortex cold wave to freeze the sprinkler system water. In some instances, the damage is so severe the entire system will have to be replaced.