El Paso, TX Building Safety: Carbon Monoxide Detectors (2026)

Adopted July 5, 2023 by Ordinance No. 1 closes a gap the base IFC left open: carbon monoxide monitoring for schools. 59 states that carbon monoxide detection shall be installed in classrooms in Group E occupancies, meaning public and private K-12 school buildings classified as Group E under the fire code. The alarm signal path is spelled out: the CO detector must tie into either the building's Fire Alarm Control Panel annunciator or a stand-alone Carbon Monoxide Detection Panel annunciator, both reporting to a location inside the building actually staffed by school personnel during occupied hours, a main office, not an empty room.

The same event must also generate a supervisory signal relayed to an off-site Central Station monitoring service, so the fire department's contracted monitoring company gets notice even if no one is at the annunciator. Inside the classroom itself, a local audible alarm sounding the standardized CO temporal code must sound in the room of origin so students and staff there know to evacuate. Because this provision sits in the Carbon Monoxide Detection section of the amended Fire Code and is scoped explicitly to Group E, it does not create a general residential carbon monoxide detector mandate for houses or apartments in El Paso.