Theatre Telephone Systems Battery Backup

[adam2]

I don't think much of any alleged redundancy in power supplies to London underground ! They no longer have their own generating plant but are totally reliant on the national grid. Supplies to sub surface stations are duplicated but both are derived from the national grid.

 

Network rail derive traction current from duplicated high voltage grid connections. These are on the "V List" of vital national infrastructure, and were NOT cut off during the power failure last August. The drop in frequency disabled large numbers of the new trains, blocking many lines. Railway stations obtain power from the local network like any other customer, many were cut off last august.

 

Basically in a large or regional power cut don't expect any underground or network rail lines to be available.

 

As both entertainment venues and society in general become more reliant on electric power, standby power will become of greater importance.

 

I have a large UPS at home to supply the more important loads for at least 24 hours. All but small and simple venues need to consider similar arrangements.

 

 

 

[kerry davies]

We can only make decisions based on current knowledge and experience. 9/11, Bataclan and Manchester showed how flawed reliance on telephony can be. In any major incident like these the landline and mobile systems get overwhelmed in seconds and take hours, even days, to reset.

 

If the decision is to keep people in the venue then emergency escape lighting lasting up to 3 hours just will not do. Then because the phones collapsed the Manchester F&R took two hours to respond rather than the normal six minutes. Gold Command was in one building and the Force Duty officer elsewhere and by the time they found each other nearly six hours had passed.

 

Sleah and Richard have it right, keep it simple. Slap an NTE 5 across an incoming line in parallel with whatever it is on and keep a cheapo handset in reception. Don't expect it to work in a major incident but do read the Kerslake report and try to locate the Gov.UK/MI5 pdf on terrorist attacks for theatres and cinemas. Your designated and appropriately trained security officer will point you to it... if you have one... which they say you should.

[sandall]

Sandall: I think we need to be clear about incoming vs. outgoing calls. Most risk assessments work on the basis that incoming calls are not safety critical, but a limited spectrum of outgoing calls (probably to 3-digit short-codes) are.

I wasn't considering incoming or outgoing calls (where mobiles may be the best bet for a local emergency, providing 10 people don't all call 999 with variations on the same report), purely person-to-person calls within the venue, e.g. "We have a problem down / up here which may mean we will have to clear the house / stop the performance", when it's essential the message gets through, discretely.

[paulears]

Should those kind of calls not be something like two way radios? Telephones tend to tie people to either a space, or other small area. Of course radios need charging regimes and control, but for emergencies are more versatile.

[Dave m]

If that's your issue then run a coms line into the FOH office with an additional circuit or alarm style buzzer to get them to switch on their station? A battery back up/ups for the coms might be useful. Or have a set of radios for FOH / Backstage emergencies ?

At work (non theatre now) we are moving from a phone network to "teams" which involves an ap on mobiles or desktops.But emergency phones will be retained where necessary.

[richardash1981]

As I understand it London Underground still have 110MW of backup gas turbine power at Greenwich Power Station, and continue to do feasibility work towards replacing the plant with a combined heat and power solution (this seems to have been going on for ever, I suspect the financial squeeze is causing it to be progressed as slowly as possible).

Off topic, but I wouldn't treat Microsoft Teams (useful as it is) as anything close to an emergency solution given it depends on Microsoft's servers https://www.theverge...te-issue-status

[Jivemaster]

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/374629/Cinemas_Theatres_Reviewed.pdf

[richard_cooper]

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/374629/Cinemas_Theatres_Reviewed.pdf

 

That document was withdrawn in 2017 and replaced with this.

[david.elsbury]

Slap an NTE 5 across an incoming line in parallel with whatever it is on and keep a cheapo handset in reception.

I rather think you're missing the point.

With BT moving to eliminate ALL copper lines and supply premises via fibre, this won't work will it?

 

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/09/bt-to-propose-full-fibre-move-and-copper-switch-off-by-2027.html

[paulears]

If we're talking about systems for emergency usage, then they have to be simple and not rely on any external infrastructure. Simple and as resilient as possible. Where I live we had a WW2 siren system repurposed for flood emergencies. They abandoned it only a few years back and distributed quantities of pagers to key people in the area. Tried it 3 times, and 3 times it failed to alert all the people. The old system had a number of locations where it could be started from, and everyone, not just the authority workers knew what it was. There isn't, as yet, a working solution other than the mobile network.

 

Up a bit Richard mentioned 105 - is this the number you phone if there is a power cut? A new one on me.

 

Councils have an Emergency Planning Officer, one of their statutory duties so why not contact your local one and discuss the problem and see if they can suggest what needs doing - if anything. When we were not so friendly with the Russians I used to do some work that involved the people who did this kind of thing and they had systems and plans in place for every eventuality in their area. I suspect they still do, although probably now more from natural disaster perspectives. Theatres with gatherings of people probably already appear on the local list. During one exercise twenty years ago, the reliance on mobile phones for disaster control fell apart badly due to too many people attempting to access smaller cells. I assume technology has improved since then, but although cell towers in the US have mandatory 8 hour backup under FCC rules, here we don't. O2 only have 1 hour capability at their sites. It's been reported a few have generators, but this is not universal. The move to these sites also serving the emergency services is also not totally resilient in the rural areas.

[Brian]

Isn't the only correct answer to the OP's question "What does your risk assessment say?"

[Jivemaster]

There should be a risk assessment but I doubt it's been revised since the Paris and Manchester terrorist events or the London Tube bombings. Realising that failure of comms can make a situation worse is important.

[sandall]

Perhaps worth bearing in mind that a Risk Assessment is a bit like an MoT Certificate; it is one person's opinion, in the circumstances that existed, or appeared worthy of consideration, on the day it was written. It could be out of date within days.

 

Going back to Paul's point about 2-way radios - in the hands of trained & disciplined professionals, capable of passing messages clearly, they can be an essential tool (though the usually-appalling audio quality is a problem) - in the hands of amateur, possibly elderly & hard-of-hearing, FoH staff, running around with loudspeakers at full volume, perhaps not.

[Brian]

It could be out of date within days.

 

Not if done properly. And you're meant to keep them up-to-date.

[sandall]

you're meant to keep them up-to-date.

Quite so, but it would be interesting to know what proportion are.....