Fire Department Investigating Shut-Off Apartment Alarm

A fire at Cordova Apartments, 51 Albion St., last week that normally would have triggered an alarm initially went unreported because someone opened the locked alarm panel and shut it off, leading to a Melrose Fire Department investigation.

On Tuesday, June 22 at 8:42 p.m., Melrose Police received a call from the Fire Department to report the incident, according to Melrose Police Lt. Mark DeCroteau.

"(The Fire Department) had information that somebody in the building had opened the fire panel with a key and silenced it," DeCroteau said. "No one is authorized to do that other than the Fire Department."

Melrose Fire Capt. Ed Collina, the department's fire prevention officer, said that the fire, which was trash-related and started in an apartment, caused minimal, smoke-related damage, but declined to offer additional details because the incident is still under investigation.

"We believe someone tampered with the fire alarm system and that's part of the ongoing investigation," Collina said.

Someone who shuts off an alarm system without a local fire department's authorization can be sentenced for up to a year in prison, levied a fine of up to $1,000, or face both imprisonment and a fine, according to state law.

Melrose Fire Chief John O'Brien said that "there's no such thing as a small fire" and that because an alarm wasn't automatically sent to the Fire Department, since the alarm was shut off, firefighters only responded once a tenant called and reported smoke in the building. He added that the Cordova Apartment condominium association recently spent a "large amount of money" upgrading the complex's fire system at the behest of the Fire Department.

"(The person who shut off the alarm) placed all those people in a great deal of jeopardy," O'Brien said. "That's one thing we treat very, very seriously."