City council in Kamloops has approved a new policy that will allow firefighters to stand down from certain residential fire alarm calls if the alarm is confirmed to be false before crews arrive.

The measure was presented to council by Ken Uzeloc, the city’s protective services director and fire chief, who said false alarms account for a significant portion of the department’s workload.

“Every year [Kamloops Fire Rescue] responds to reports of fires and fire alarm activations originating from individual callers, localized fire alarm systems and monitored fire alarm systems,” Uzeloc told council. “The responding crews attend the dispatched address to verify the situation, determine whether an emergency exists and, where necessary, take action to mitigate that.”

False alarms make up about 10% of calls

Uzeloc said the department responded to more than 1,000 false alarms last year.

“In 2025 we had roughly 537 residential and just over 500 commercial false alarms,” he said. “That equates to about 10% of our total call volume.”

Even when a homeowner or alarm monitoring company calls dispatch to confirm the alarm was accidental, crews currently continue to the property to verify the situation.

“This is not a great use of resources, especially when we’re already seeing increased demand for services,” Uzeloc said. “It also adds undue wear and tear on the apparatus.”

How the new policy works

Under the new policy, fire crews may cancel their response if dispatch receives confirmation that a residential alarm was triggered accidentally and no emergency exists.

However, dispatchers must verify key information before a response can be discontinued.

If the call comes from a monitoring service, dispatch will confirm the company’s name, the representative making the call and their contact information. If the call comes from an occupant or owner, the caller must confirm they are at least 19 years old, are physically at the property and can verify that no emergency exists.

Dispatchers must also document the address, confirm the caller stated the alarm was false, advise the caller that firefighters may stand down and note anything unusual about the conversation.

Limited to certain homes

The policy only applies to smaller residential properties such as:

• single-family homes
• duplexes
• triplexes
• townhouses
• mobile homes

Fire crews will still respond to alarms at multi-unit residential buildings, commercial or industrial properties and civic facilities such as hospitals and detention centres.

Uzeloc said firefighters can often identify signs of a real emergency beyond a single alarm activation.

“Generally when we have an event there are other signs — there’s smoke, there’s flame, there are odours, there are neighbours phoning in to confirm that there’s a fire,” he said. “Those are the ones that truly are fires. If it was a fire, it would be coded as something else and not show up as a false alarm.”

Causes of false alarms

During council discussion, members asked what typically triggers the alarms.

Uzeloc said many are caused by everyday household activities.

“Sometimes it’s cooking, burning toast, or having an alarm too close to a shower where the steam sets it off,” he said. “There’s a variety of reasons that trigger these.”

The issue is not unique to Kamloops, he added, noting false alarms typically account for between 10 and 15 per cent of total call volume for fire departments.

“This is not something unique to Kamloops,” Uzeloc said.

Costs and resource impacts

Councillors also asked about the financial impact of unnecessary responses.

Uzeloc said the estimated billable cost of operating a fire engine with a crew for one hour is about $675.

The department already has the ability to fine properties for repeated false alarms, particularly in commercial buildings, as a way to encourage system maintenance and education.

“We do educate when we have false alarms, especially when we have repeated ones,” Uzeloc said. “If we continue to get repeated ones, we have the option of charging fines to encourage them to look at their system.”

Other cities watching the policy

Uzeloc said other municipalities are monitoring Kamloops’ approach.

“I have three municipalities who are waiting to see the outcome of this proposed council policy so they can take it and do the same thing,” he said.

Council ultimately voted to adopt the new policy, allowing Kamloops Fire Rescue to stand down from confirmed false alarms at qualifying residential properties within Kamloops.