What Do I Do if Emergency Vehicles Need to Enter Through My Gate?March 27th, 2015

Imagine:

You, your wife, son, or daughter is trapped inside your burning home. They’re standing by the 2nd story window, deciding whether or not to jump.

If they go back inside your house, they’ll die from smoke inhalation or suffer severe burns that take decades to recover from. It’s getting hot, and they’re close to the point where they have to risk jumping and breaking their legs and arms.

Your circuit breaker, unfortunately, was destroyed in the fire too.

Just a few seconds remain…

But now you hear the sirens of fire engines coming. They’ll have something soft your loved one can safely land on.

Oh no! You don’t have power and your gate isn’t opening!

What can emergency medical personnel do?

The Story Doesn’t End There, But You Get the Point…

Your gate should open even if you don’t have power. However, while most gates work this way, not all do!

The responsibility falls on the contractor you hire. All gates J&J installs work even when you don’t have power.

But some contractors aren’t experienced and don’t make your gate this way. Others try to cut corners, underpricing competitors.

Could you imagine watching your loved one suffer, being completely powerless to help them?

And what if you had your gate built this way just so you could save $1000?

You’d have a hard time living with that guilt…especially if your loved one suffered severe burns – or died.

If emergency responders need to get through your gate, and it was built properly, you should be able to do 1 of 3 things:

• Let backup power should kick in, letting the gate work like normal
• Watch the gate open automatically because it has backup power
• Allow your gate to default to being unlocked, so anyone can easily enter

If your gate has power, you should be able to open it without problems. If it doesn’t, it still should work.

If your gate doesn’t do any of these things, the installing contractor did shoddy work. International fire code requires your gate to do one of these.

If the above scenario happens and your gate doesn’t work, emergency responders wrap a chain around and tear it down.

That costs precious seconds – seconds which could cost your loved one their life. At the least, it’ll cost you $1000, probably more, for repairs.

If J&J installed your gate, you have nothing to worry about because all our gates are designed to work in emergency situations. But, if another contractor did, there’s no guarantees.

You can easily test your gate by turning off power at the circuit breaker and watching what happens. Try to open it manually.

If nothing happens, or if you’re not comfortable doing this yourself, call a qualified contractor. You could be saving your loved one’s, or your own, life.