{"id":258784,"date":"2026-08-04T05:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T05:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/258784\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T05:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T05:28:07","slug":"reading-city-council-considers-new-fines-for-false-fire-alarms-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/258784\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading City Council considers new fines for false fire alarms | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0Reading City Council learned at its Committee of the Whole meeting that the city fire department has recommended an amended ordinance to increase the false fire alarm violation fine to $400 per incident.<\/p>\n

Fire Marshall Jeremy Searfoss explained the existing \u201cneedless alarm\u201d program started in 2002 and set fines for needless automatic alarms on a sliding scale which range from no cost for the first incident to $300 for the 10th false alarm.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral months ago, we dealt with a building on North 10th Street where it generated over a dozen responses in less than 24 hours, and we could not get a hold of the property owner to address this issue,\u201d Searfoss said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sending up to $2.5 million worth of fire apparatus to every one of these calls,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the last 90 days, there have been 300 what we would classify as \u2018needless alarms\u2019 in the city of Reading. It has become a significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cNeedless\u201d fire alarms can be caused by dust from construction work, smoking under detectors, and even hairspray.<\/p>\n

Councilmembers said they are in favor of the change in fees, but Councilmember Rafael Nunez said he is in favor of a $500 fee per incident and plans to make an amendment to the ordinance at next Monday night\u2019s voting meeting.<\/p>\n

Fire Chief Robert Leonard told council that 95% to 98% of automatic fire alarms end up being false alarms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt puts us at risks for accidents, and it puts citizens at risk as they are trying to move out of the way,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cI think that having these fees will put them (property owners) on notice that they need to start monitoring their fire alarms.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0Reading City Council learned at its Committee of the Whole meeting that the city fire department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1089,2004,2001,108074,11615,23051,1094,128,1095,130,129,100031,109843,109842],"class_list":["post-258784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-chris-miller","tag-community-development-director","tag-david-barr","tag-false-alarm","tag-fire-chief","tag-jeremy-searfoss","tag-rafael-nunez","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-robert-leonard","tag-vacant-property-registry","tag-vpr-list"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}