This sets how many seconds an alarm must remain active before its severity is escalated to major. Sitting between the minor and critical escalation thresholds for the same alarm model, this value determines how much longer operations staff have before an alarm that already went minor gets treated as a real service-impacting event requiring active response. For example, configured at 120 seconds, an optical-power alarm that has stayed at minor severity for two full minutes automatically becomes major, which typically prompts an on-call page.