Fire alarms - chaos in a school

[Paul TC]

Trust me - there were definitely some on full-time auto.

Just to back you up, late 80's my breifing on my first visit to a mobile telephone exchange was along the lines of, "if the fire alarm sounds, run and get out, you have 30 secs before the halon dump".

[timd]

Trust me - there were definitely some on full-time auto.

 

Yup, server room tour at the UCS this year, suppressant dump after 30 sec unless one of the hold buttons located at all the doors was pressed.

[Gerry]

Don't know if they still install them, but back when I were a field engineer working in computer rooms about the region, there were strict rules about what you could do in those spaces due to the fire alarm system.

ANY soldering had to be advised well in advance so the system could be isolated. If you forgot, and the detectors picked it up (they would...!) then once the sounder started you usually had something like 30 seconds to get the hell out of dodge before the Total Halon fire suppression in the server room cut in - and Halon is NASTY to humans - pretty much clearing the room of oxygen in seconds flat, extinguishing any chance of flame!

In my working days in a computer department the fire alarm went off, all room were checked to see if they were empty, the computer room was declared empty but the warden failed to spot the female asleep on the floor behind here desk.

Fortunately it was a false alarm and the halon flooding system wasn't activated.

Cheers

Gerry

[Ashley R]

Personally that is REALLY bad, checking a room at a glance means nothing, if someone has fallen or passed out (for what EVER reason) and they cannot get back out, that is SCARY.

 

I mean, not that room has been checked at a glance, but someone running down the hall way, can quickly see that this room has been cleared, without haveing to re enter each room and physically check. All rooms are only locked from the outside, even if locked and your on the inside you can get out.

 

Sorry, but locking rooms that aren't normally supposed to be locked is a VERY bad idea. Not least because of the inevitable extra time (no matter HOW short that is) but also as was pointed out above the fact that if all doors are locked the fire crew would have to break them down to get through if needed.

And the post-its - say, in a real fire, you post-it noted and locked the doors but miss an errant schoolboy hiding in there for a jolly jape....

Fire service come in, and as per YOUR guidance say that every locked door with a post-it is clear.... They therefore on YOUR instructions ignore said door with child who may by now be suffocating from the smoke from the fire nearby/floor below etc...

 

Extreme example, maybe, but one that could easily happen.

 

Has this practice of locking and sticking been documented and approved by the fire service??

 

I have no clue if this practice has been approved by the fire service, but both these schools are large private ones, and one would assume that it has been checked by someone in the know. (But then again one of these schools, has not bothered to do a PAT test on all of the gear this year for some reason, so its all out by I think 10 months now, just about the first thing I noticed when I joined the 2nd school)

 

And I know they lock the doors, as when we are requested to leave to classroom during a fire drill, the staff member in charge of our class locks the door behind us, presumably so no one can re enter the room.

 

I am only just saying what I have observed over multiple fire drills, I don't know anything about the decision making etc. behind it, I just see what people do during a fire drill.

[paulears]

LOCKING doors in an emergency situation is, in my humble opinion, a rather risky and foolhardy thing to do. Reasons are many, but what says that the fire route planned will be viable? The seat of the fire could mean the anticipated exit route is blocked, a people may be funnelled the wrong way, so locked doors could potentially remove some exits. If I was on the first floor, and I could see daylight through outside windows in a room off a corridor, I can see a desk going through the window and me taking my chances jumping out. You see this in real fires every day - if people are in first floor areas with windows, then it's simple for the firemen to get you out. Locking rooms limits exit potential. As mentioned, there is also the potential to lock people in. Many installations where security means doors are normally locked, open these doors when the alarm goes off automatically. The actual locking system is flawed too, these types of activities assume the person with the keys is in a particular place when the alarm goes off. This is very unreliable, and nowadays the idea of a person being available all the time is really difficult. The usual method where each department has a 'head' who is the usual person in charge, and then in the case of alarm, this person sweeps the area is the best, because when this person is off, somebody else normally deputises, and can deputise for the fire purpose too. Bunches of keys are such a long winded system, a risk assessment would shoot holes through it very quickly - the "what if ..." list would soon identify loads of problems with it. They work in the nice orderly fire drill, but what happens when there is a real fire, and real panic, and the nice orderly procession gets replaced with people running!

[kerry davies]

Don't be humble Paul, it is WRONG! Just as bad and reprehensible as wedging fire doors open. (Why does everyone do that with extinguishers? Irony?)

 

Cursory looks through the door are not sufficient, hiding places need checking, people bend to pick things up and could be missed, deaf people need visual signals, blind people need guidance and those with ambulatory disabilities need assistance.

 

I don't much like using "what if's" but rather "how can we's" to keep things positively focused. Locking doors just places more obstacles and delays in the way of safe, swift, registry logged evacuation. The time delay element alone makes it dangerous.

[pritch]

Don't be humble Paul, it is WRONG! Just as bad and reprehensible as wedging fire doors open. (Why does everyone do that with extinguishers? Irony?)

 

On that subject... do people (and by people, I don't mean posters in this thread) understand what a fire door is for?

 

I took someone to task on this a few months back after they'd propped a fire door open. I got the response of "Why does it matter? If it's propped open, doesn't that mean people can get out faster in a fire, anyway?".

[danburns]

 

On that subject... do people (and by people, I don't mean posters in this thread) understand what a fire door is for?

 

 

 

I do have problems in some places explaining that there is a big difference between a fire door and a fire exit. A few people also take the view that if it's held open with rope, then the rope will burn through before the fire has a chance to spread. (We are upgrading to mag releases soon on these doors!)

 

They get more confused when a fire door is a fire exit as well...

[Paul TC]

LOCKING doors in an emergency situation is, in my humble opinion, a rather risky and foolhardy thing to do.

 

Site I was on some years ago, a fire alarm would not unlock electronic doors to test areas where lone working was undertaken, as they stated risk of theft was considered higher than the chance of an individual being trapped in there, and doors were configured to fail LOCKED SHUT in event of power failure.

 

Also there was no overide for this LOCKED SHUT state outside room, hence we spent several days rebuilding servers as we could not enter room during a power failure to shut down servers which only had 2 hour UPS's.

 

Same would have applied if someone had become incapacitated within room.

 

They would not move from this position due to someone sufferring thefts when fire alarm was used to ease access into a building.

[Andrew Edwards]

*sighs*

 

Even on the weekly early morning alarm test, I still get up immediately and head out on my marshalling rounds. Sometimes I barely get down the corridor, other times I can get several rooms away. All those seconds waiting to see if it is just the test could make all the difference.

 

I would agree with many of the sentiments already expressed. 'We' chose to let everyone fend for them selves at completely the wrong time. My father spent over 15 years with Leicestershire Fire Service as Prevention Officer. He inspected literally every [qualifying] business in the county during that time and was instrumental (along with his colleagues in other counties and the national campaigns and initiatives) in significantly reducing the number of major incidents in homes and businesses across the county. Heck, I spent countless weekends dressed as weliphant or fireman sam at village and school fetes promoting fire safety

During the 90s and into the early 00s I can only remember a few fires making the news. We became complacent and the authorities decided that there work was done. Then in 2005 we had Buncefield...I guess it wasn't.

 

Now fires almost seem to have there own daily slot...take that poor family in the fire in Helensburgh yesterday.

 

We need to do something...

[ramdram]

Ref Kerry and blocking open fire doors with fire extinguishers. I did a course, many years ago mind, with the Beeb FO at our monitoring station near Reading. As usual we all did the what if thing and mentioned fire doors blocked open with bottles. His response was that he had no issues with that because you could see the bottle and when you grabbed it the door would shut anyway.

 

What he did not like was the bottle near the final exit as required, BUT, stuck behind the door...which had been wedged open and might prove difficult to close in the possible panic. He mentioned that people could do the strangest things when frightened and stressed, including trying to close a wedged door and not realising the door just got wedged tighter.

 

However, despite all the training his parting advice was that if you were in the least bit apprehensive about fighting a fire, even in a waste paper bin (and they were all metal of course and FOO, not forgetting to let other folk know as you legged it.