Knox-Box Fire Department Emergency Access to your home or business

The Putnam Lake Fire Department and the Town of Patterson Building Department encourage the purchase and installation of a Knox-Box system for residents and business owners. This system provides a reliable and rapid method of accessing your residence or business to firefighters during an emergency when owners are unavailable to respond to an activated fire related alarm. 

Reasons to install a Knox-Box unlocking system:

• Eliminates needless, costly forced entry damage that may not be covered by your insurance deductible.
• Assure immediate building entry by firefighters without delay of waiting for building keys.
• Reduce liability for lost keys.
• Protect inventory, equipment and supplies from unnecessary water damage caused by delayed sprinkler shut-off.
• Satisfy local fire codes and emergency access ordinances.
• Save time and aggravation by not having to drive to your building at odd hours.
• Feel secure about emergency coverage when your building is left unattended.
• The fire department holds the only key to the Knox-Box at your location.
• Maintain building security after a fire alarm investigation by simply re-locking the undamaged door.
• Protect your property from thousands of dollars in damage with this one-time relatively low cost investment.
• Depend on the highest lock box security technology available with attack resistant, UL tested reliability.
• Over the past 25 years, Knox-Box has been the chosen solution in 7,500 communities nationwide communities just like ours!

How does it work? 

During the early morning hours your building alarm system transmits a signal to your alarm monitoring company, who in-turn contact the Local fire department which is immediately dispatched to your alarmed location. Fire department personnel arrive a short time later and conducts an initial size-up of your location. Officers on the scene determine that an entry is warranted. If a Knox-Box system is in place a signal is transmitted to the fire truck on scene and it unlocks our Knox Box Key.The fire officer then takes that key and unlocks the box on the outside of your building. The keys inside are in turn used to unlock your protected location. After brief interior inspection is conducted and no problems found, firefighters simply lock up the building when leaving and return the entry key to the Knox-Box. Fire department officers then radio dispatch that no fire was found, and then leave the scene doing no damage. If the Knox-Box system was not in place windows may be broken or doors forced. This causes owners to repair the damage and for a time this location will not be as secure as it might otherwise be.  You can see that with just one use the Knox-Box system could pay for its self in dollars and peace of mind. The Knox-Box system could also be utilized if someone at your protected location has a medical emergency and EMS is required. This system would allow immediate access to those who may need rapid emergency medical intervention.

Additional information on the Knox-Box system can be found at http://www.knoxbox.com.

For additional fire protection information please contact the Chief at chief@plfd.org.