Archive: February 2014
Faulty smoke alarms cited as factor in fatal fire
February 27, 2014SSN Staff
FARGO, N.D.—One of the region's largest landlords is facing a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of a man who died in a fire in one of its rental apartments, according to INFORUM, a news website.Parents of James Peyton allege in the lawsuit that Peyton and his roommate told Goldmark Property Management before the fatal fire that the smoke alarms were malfunctioning in their apartment at Ashbury Apartments, the news site reported Feb. 24.The 31-year-old died in the fire during the early morning...
Fire causes $500,000 in damage
February 27, 2014SSN Staff
AMHERST, N.Y.—A building here that lacked a fire alarm system sustained an estimated half a million dollars in damage after a fire Feb. 23, The Buffalo News reported.The afternoon blaze at the offices of Orkin Pest Control in the Amherst Inducon Park Business Development was discovered by an Amherst police officer responding to a motion detector call in the offices, the newspaper reported. Firefighters kept the flames from spreading to Orkin's chemical storage area, the paper said.Main-Transit...
MicroPower offers integrators financing option
February 26, 2014Martha Entwistle
SAN DIEGO—Wireless surveillance provider MicroPower is offering a new financing option designed to speed projects along and create RMR opportunities for integrators.For a limited time, MicroPower will offer financing for the installation and product cost of its Helios surveillance system.The financing can work in a number of different ways, according to Dave Tynan, MicroPower VP of global marketing and sales. “The end user can finance through us and we pay the integrator, or they can...
Central station vet gets TriStar off the ground
February 26, 2014Leif Kothe
CORONA, Calif.—TriStar Monitoring, based here, may be a newcomer to the central station space, but the company's president and founder, Tim LeBlanc, is anything but. LeBlanc, who went live with the company in February 2013, is a 38-year veteran of the industry who spent 18 years at Huntington Beach, Calif.-based General Monitoring Services, where he served as president until 2012.With a tenure of that length, starting a business in the security industry becomes far less of challenge, LeBlanc...
Minn. fire company wins sprinkler contracts worth more than $1.25m
February 26, 2014Tess Nacelewicz
ELK RIVER, Minn.—Brothers Fire Protection, a complete life safety solutions company, in February announced it had won two big sprinkler jobs totaling more than $1.25 million—one at a student housing complex and one at an Air Force base.Brothers started as a sprinkler company 20 years ago. “We added the alarm/security business in 2009,” company President Stephen Cieslukowski told Security Systems News. “The two businesses do complement each other well, and it allows us...
Security entrepreneur unveils new website
February 26, 2014Leif Kothe
SOUTHBURY, Conn.—Three years after launching SecuritySpecifiers.com, security industry entrepreneur Ray Coulombe is introducing RepsforSecurity.com, a database-driven website that helps manufacturers identify security reps who can optimize their sales presence in a given region or market.As with SecuritySpecifiers.com, Coulombe believes the new website fills an industry void, allowing manufacturers to use reps to augment an existing sales force or, in other cases, be deployed in lieu of it.“I...
New front in Illinois fire monitoring battle
February 26, 2014Tess Nacelewicz
DES PLAINES, Ill.—Just as Illinois fire protection districts are shutting down their fire monitoring programs because of a federal court ruling saying such public entities aren't authorized to be that business, proposed new state legislation would grant the districts that authority.
The industry is fighting back, organizing private alarm companies to help defeat House Bill 5683. They say the bill would shut out them out of the commercial fire monitoring market. The industry contends...
This Blog's on Fire (And Other Stuff)
Vivint says 2013 banner year for new subscribers
February 26, 2014Tess Nacelewicz
The number of Vivint's net new subscribers in 2013 was 219,034, the most in the company's 15-year history, Vivint President Alex Dunn told investors this week at the J.P. Morgan Global High Yield and Leveraged Finance Conference. APX Group Holdings, of which Provo, Utah-based home automation/home security company Vivint is a subsidiary, presented at the conference on Feb. 25.
According to information on the presentation provided by the company, Dunn presented Vivint to investors as a key player in...
DirectView explores legal marijuana vertical
February 26, 2014Leif Kothe
Though 18 states had previously legalized marijuana for medical use, it was the pair of initiatives passed in Colorado and Washington that legalized the substance recreationally that seems to have made the security industry more attentive to what kind of possibilities lie ahead in this new and rapidly expanding market.
It's not difficult to see why. Those operating dispensaries and growing facilities will require security solutions for many of the same reasons an end user at a jewelry store would:...
Business optimization at ASG
February 26, 2014Martha Entwistle
Aronson Security Group, the Seattle-based systems integrator, is putting more resources into its Business Optimization Center.
The integrator announced this week that Nigel Waterton has been promoted to SVP of Corporate Strategy and Development for ASG. in this new role, Waterton—who was a speaker at TechSec 2014 on the topic of big data—"will guide the value proposition for ASG's professional services, engineering, implementation, and performance that their management teams fulfill."
In...