Sewer System Tests in New City Spark Many False Fire Calls

When there's smoke, it doesn't always mean there's fire – sometimes it's just a case of bad plumbing.

People throughout New City recently have been seeing a lot of smoke coming from commercial buildings and homes, and then calling 911 to report a fire. However, most of the time the smoke they are seeing is from harmless tests being performed on the local sewer system.

The non-toxic white smoke is used to detect leaks or improper connections to the sewer system.  The agency that operates the sewer system in Clarkstown and Ramapo, Rockland County Sewer District No. 1, is conducting the tests in an effort to reduce the amount of clean water that enters the sewers, which are designed to handle only waste water bound for the county sewage treatment plant in Orangeburg.

Dianne Philipps, executive director of the sewer district, said excessive water in the sewer system creates environmentally hazardous overflows and spills. By using the "smoke test" method, Philipps said technicians find buildings where downspouts from gutters and other plumbing used for drainage are improperly hooked into the sewer lines instead of storm drains.

"Our goals it is to prevent the overflows," Philipps said.

Philipps said the sewer district makes an extensive effort to alert the public before smoke tests are conducted. In addition to notices delivered to the affected areas, the sewer district posts bulletins about the tests in public places – like Clarkstown Town Hall in New City - and uses "reverse 911" telephone messages to reach homeowners.

Philipps also said the sewer district sends daily updates to local and county fire officials so they know where the testing is taking place.

Despite the outreach efforts, New City Fire Department officials say many members of the public are not familiar with the smoke tests and frequently mistake the white smoke as sign of a fire. Each time a fire is reported at a site where smoke testing is taking place, New City volunteer firefighters are dispatched to the location to check out the call.

New City Fire Department Assistant Chief Kenneth Flynn said that Monday through Friday, his department gets several calls a day that turn out to false alarms related to the smoke testing. New City treats the emergency calls in smoke testing areas like any other call, Flynn said, just in case there is a real emergency.

"We would rather got out there and check it out instead of showing up late if there is a fire," Flynn said.

Rockland County Fire Coordinator Gordon Wren said some fire departments, such as nearby Hillcrest, take a different approach to handling suspected false alarms related to smoke testing. Wren said Hillcrest assigns a volunteer firefighter with a department vehicle to stay in touch with the smoke testing crews, and when there is a 911 call reporting a fire at a location that is on the daily list for smoke testing the volunteer goes to the scene to confirm whether there's a fire or if its just a case of harmless smoke testing.

On a recent day in New City, three crews from the Peapody, Mass., engineering firm of Weston and Sampson were conducting smoke tests in the area for Rockland County Sewer District No. 1. The teams, armed with maps of the sewer system and special smoke "candles" generally take about a day to work their way through a neighborhood.

Nathan Philippi of the Weston and Sampson Peabody office and Dan Pacella of the company's Poughkeepsie office started the day recently by conducting tests in the Laurel Road area just off Route 304 in New City.

To start off their work, Philippi and Pacella, who lives in Orangeburg, set up large orange and black "smoke testing" signs to identify what kind of work they are doing. Working from a Weston and Sampson van, Philippi started the testing process by opening a sewer manhole and placing a specially-designed fan on top of the manhole.

With the gas-powered fan in operation, the crew places three smoke candles on a metal screen in the fan – within seconds white smoke can be spotted coming from the roof vents of homes for several blocks. With the smoke flowing, Philippi and Pacella walked through the neighborhood looking for signs of illegal connections.

On this stop, there were no signs of trouble. Philippi said that a common sign that there is a problem is when smoke is visible coming out of rain gutters of a home or building. Additionally, Philippi said the smoke testing will reveal any spots on a roadway where cracks in the pavement are allowing water to get into the sewers. In that case, white smoke would literally rise up from the streets.

As the smoke candles used for the test run out, Philippi said fresh air flowing through the sewer systems flushes out all the smoke as quickly as the smoke started flowing.

On the crew's stop in the Laurel Road area, no one called 911 to report a fire during the smoke testing. However, it was easy to see how someone passing by could mistake smoke rising from a home to be a fire. On homes where the plumbing vents are located on the rear portion of the roof, the while smoke appeared to be coming from the top of the house. On home with the roof plumbing vents on the front, it was easy to tell the smoke was not from a fire.

Sewer district officials say that sometimes the smoke testing reveals hazards built into a home's plumbing system, such as a vent that only goes as far as the inside of an attic and doesn't go all the way through the roof to the exterior of the home. In those cases, smoke from the testing would go into the attic space. However, that also means that harmful sewer gases that are meant to be vented out of the house could be pouring into the attic.