Fire alarms should be more intuitive

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Our workplace is moving to a new building at some point this month. Until then, we’re still located in the old building, which is a truly *old * building. A couple hundred years ago it was a mill, now it’s the home of about 3 dozen small businesses. Our portion of the building has very few real walls, but has partions that you can see other parts of the building over.

Instead of the typical boxy ventlation shafts in the ceiling that most big buildings seem to have, this building still has huge pipe-like ones that are about 4’ around, puncuated through out by grates where heat comes out.

When we got back from lunch at 12:30, a few of us began to discuss the strange smell that seemed to be coming from near the window. Two of us decided to ask a third person if it smelled like gas to her. Just as we turned in her direction, there was a wooshing noise that ended in a large bang, and we saw a fire ball through the grate nearest the kitchen. I’ve never seen anything like that outside a movie, and all though it was kind of neat, I’d be happy enough to never see another.

We blinked in shock - we thought the gas was behind us, not across from the room - then the building manager (for our company, I mean) shouted that there was a fire - duh- and that we all needed to leave NOW. We all dutifully did, but it took about 1 minute to get to the fire doors. As we did, it occured to me that something was missing - no fire alarm.

No one in the rest of the mill building knew there was a fire!

I found the alarm, and I think there’s too much writing on it. Lift this, pull this down… trying to figure it out wasted about 15 seconds. Fortunately the fire didn’t spread very quickly, but it makes me worry if it had, that’s more seconds than you should have to take.

Apparently they found the source of the gas leak and repaired it. After an hour we all got to go home and the plan is to go back tomorrow. sigh. So…did anyone else’s building catch on fire today?

2

I’m confused. This was supposed to be in MPSIMS…I don’t even recall reading any GQ threads today. Mods, sorry and feel free to move it.

3

I fully appreciate your run-in with a pull station. Each manfacturer has their own method of activating the alarm. Makes for very confusing operations.

However…
The pull stations are required to be placed at exits. You were at an exit when you pulled the alarm. And, despite the confusing mechanism added to the adrenaline of the situation, you did still manage to pull the alarm. Had you not been able to and the area around you became untenable, you were at an exit to bail out of the building.

All in all, the system worked as designed. Could it be better, sure; but it still worked.

4

friend elfkin477

i make my living as a fire alarm service and repair technician. the older the building, the older the fire alarm technology it uses. new construction and buildings that have been brought up to current code have much more fully featured and sophisticated fire alarms.

had the ventelation ducts been equiped with duct smoke detectors, chances are you would have had more warning. it sounds like your building is equipeed with just the basic manually operated fire alar. you had to pull a handle to initiate an alarm, and the source of the fire was not automatically detected. are there sprinklers in your building?

the newer computer programmable and addressable fire alarm systems are amazingly versatile. take for example the university which is my largest account. there are 31 buildings. probably 5,000 smoke detectors, another 5000 heat detectors, 800 or so duct smoke detectors, about 300 manual pull stations and innumerable horns bells storbes door holders and the like.

each input (detector, pull station) is unique. each output function (bell, horn ) is also unique. it is possible to task each input to any or all outputs.

for example: the smoke detector in the alumni building attic in the extreme north western corner of the campus, in addition to all other tasks it is to perform shuts the boiler room fire door in the basement of the science and technology building about three miles away in the extreme south eastern corner of the campus. (i just wanted to see if it would work)

fire alarm systems can be quite intuitive…

lh

5

I’ll cast no stones at the OP. The statement that it took “15 seconds” to figure out activation of a pull station goes in the file with “It took the fire company/cops/EMS a half-hour to arrive.” When excited, time passes in slow-motion. That is all. :wink:

6

Off to MPSIMS

DrMatrix - GQ Moderator

7

I wouldn’t mind seeing a pic of this inscrutable alarm pull. All the ones I’ve ever been face to face with were pretty easy to suss out. The ones that are flat-fronted just need you to push in and pull down. The old ones are just pull down. The old ones under glass are smash and pull. You make the ones in your building sound as if they have combination locks.

8

<hijack>

The business incubator? Down by the river, with the clocktower on top?

If so, that IS a freaky building… glad I don’t work there any more.
</hijack>

9

Just to remind everyone how serious fire is, two firemen died today trying to rescue a woman, who also died.

I tested my fire alarm last night; when did you last test yours?

10

Mine go off randomly in the middle of the freaking night because they’re so sensitive that errant dust will set them off. They’re all hardwired together, so when one goes, they all go.

The ones here at work could be a little better though (or at least explained a little better), because the sound they make is not very intuitive. When they did go off the one day (because some construction workers building a new section of the building set them off), few people knew what the sound meant. It actually sounded more like a burglar alarm indicating that door had been opened.

11

Smoke detectors are not immune to dust problems. Vacuuming the exterior is proper activity for a homeowner. I’ve found spider nests inside problem photoelectric detectors. If your detectors are over 10 years old, the NFPA recommends that they be replaced owing to sensitivity drift.

Regarding the sound emitted, Temporal 3 or T-3 is preferred. A succession of three half second steady tones interspersed with half second quiet moments, repeated with a 1.5 second break is becoming the de facto fire alarm standard.

12

I did an image search on google and couldn’t find one that looked at all like it before I gave up 16 pages into the search; I did find several pictures of the ones you’ve seen, however. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were old than I am, though, so perhaps they don’t make them like this now.

As for sprinklers, there are some in stairwells, but not overhead, at least in our section of the building.

We got word on how the fire started: yesterday it was warm (about 40F) for the first time in weeks, just warm enough to loosen some ice, which smashed into a gas main. Two years ago a block of ice about 5’ wide took out 2 of the 3 windows in the ladies’ room - with enough force to open the door and scatter glass into the hallway - when it fell off the roof, you’d think that’d be enough to get the landlord to be concerned about ice, but no.

I’m so glad we’re moving to a new building. It* is * kind of nice to be able to take a walk on break inside the building, but I’d rather be in a smaller, safer building.

13

They’re three years old, which is the age of the house, and they get vacuumed every week. There is absolutely no reason for them to go off because of dust less than 24 hours after they’ve been thorougly vacuumed.

And no, nobody smokes inside the house. Ever.

Maybe it is, but I figure if you’ve got a building with 400 people in it and nobody recognizes that those ‘weird beeps’ might be the fire alarm, it’s probably not a good sound to use since it didn’t effectively convey the message.

14

Agreed-no good reason for 3 year old detectors to be falsing like that. Detectors are typically fitted with LEDs to indicate status. Flashing red usually indicates ‘Powered-OK’ and a locked red indicates the head which initiated the alarm. More than one false from a head is cause for replacement as defective.