Ronald McDonald House in Birmingham, Ala.

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Birmingham, Ala.-based Prestige Alarm and Specialty Products recently donated an E3 Series Expandable Emergency Evacuation System, manufactured by Northford, Conn.-based Gamewell-FCI, to the Birmingham Ronald McDonald House. Ronald McDonald Houses around the country provide temporary housing to families of children undergoing medical treatment.

In 2003, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama (RMHCA) voted to raise $6.75 million to build a new facility in Birmingham. Prestige Alarm CEO Eddie Harden was asked to price the fire alarm system for the facility. His young children overheard and offered to help pay for it, motivating Harden to donate the system in his children's names, along with the installation and three years of monitoring and maintenance services. “I've seen families receive the blessing of the Ronald McDonald House. It meant a lot to me to be a part of the new facility and provide a system that will protect lives there for many years,” Harden says.

The Gamewell-FCI E3 Series system selected for the facility operates on a 625k broadband pipeline. It is capable of supporting a network of up to 64 nodes and more than 20,000 sensors, and can be expanded or reconfigured to accommodate future growth. According to Harden, the fire protection system installed at the new Ronald McDonald House includes smoke detectors in each guest room and common areas, as well as facility-wide pull stations, speakers, annunciators and control modules for integrating elevator and HVAC control. “The system also includes wireless radio communications for monitoring the system at our central office without the use of telephone lines,” Harden says.

The new 33,000-square-foot, three-story Ronald McDonald House features 41 bedrooms, an elevator, private bathrooms, a family-style kitchen and common areas. “We were at the peak of construction inflation when building this facility and had a very small budget for a basic life safety system,” says Roberta Shapiro, former executive director and construction consultant for RMHCA. “For a company the size of Prestige Alarm, the contribution of this system was a very big donation.”