False alarm causes exodus
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 14, 2016 10:04 AM
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News-Argus/SETH COMBS
A false fire alarm at Anchor Coupling Inc. at 106 Industry Court Tuesday morning caused about 30 employees to be evacuated from the building.
The false alarm was triggered around 9:45 a.m. Tuesday by the city's sewer smoke testing program, where smoke is pumped into the sewer system and occasionally comes out of pipes.
Assistant Goldsboro Fire Chief Eric Lancaster said the smoke testing caused one of the rooms inside the business "near the front of the building" to fill with smoke and triggered the alarm.
"It's theatrical smoke, but it will set off a fire alarm," Lancaster said. "When my company got here they were already evacuating the building."
Lancaster said the room that was filled with smoke also had a floor buffer inside, which was initially believed to have caught on fire but did not.
The room that filled with smoke was ventilated with a fan and the scene was cleared around 10:30 a.m.
Other buildings surrounding Anchor Coupling Inc. also had smoke coming out of their pipes, and smoke was rolling up from manholes and storm drains in the area also.
Goldsboro Chief Engineer Marty Anderson said the city began smoke testing its sewers around Aug. 8.
According to data provided by the Goldsboro Fire Department, there were 84 false fire alarms the fire department had to respond to because of the smoke testing through Aug. 31.
"What it does is if there's any holes in the sewer line, or if there's any missing sewer service caps on the cleanout pipe that's in everybody's yard, the smoke will escape through that hole so they can determine what kind of defect it is," Anderson said. "If it comes out in the storm drain, we know there's a storm drain issue."
The city's smoke testing is being performed by McKim and Creed.
Smoke tests are performed by blowing smoke into manholes and seeing where smoke pops out along the sewer lines.