School sprinklers and alarms disconnected by contractor

Investigations into faulty fire protection systems at a Christchurch school found contractors solved problems of false alarms by disconnecting more than 300 smoke detectors and alarm switches. That meant about half the 2000 students at Cashmere High School were in classrooms where if there had been a fire, evacuation alarms would not have sounded, sprinklers wouldn't have worked and the fire brigade would not have been called. The safety systems were installed by Kane Lacey's firm Aethon Infrastructure, which went into receivership in August. Mr Lacey denies doing any substandard work and says he told the school he'd disconnected parts of the system to get around the false alarm problem. Investigator Simon Wilson from Optimus Fire told reporter Phil Pennington he discovered a host of problems when he got to the school.