First a disclaimer: no I don’t want to die in a fire, so when I hear an alarm I will proceed promptly to the exit, thank you.
Have to post a peeve that I have a few times a year, after having now peeled myself off the ceiling and gone to stand in the hot parking lot for 15 minutes. My peeve isn’t having to go out and stand in the lot, I’m okay with that part. It’s the volume of the alarm that first causes me to launch like a startled cartoon cat who latches every claw firmly into the ceiling and then needs a friend wielding a claw hammer to release each claw and let me drop. And then have to cover my ears, grimacing in pain as I proceed toward the exit. Why does the freaking alarm have to be so painfully LOUD?
Is it so that the volume causes vibrations in the air that even deaf people can sense (e.g., an ADA requirement)?
Is it to make being in the building so painful that we run for the doors to get relief?
Rhetorical: is it really necessary to en-deafen us all in the name of fire safety?
After reading the title, I thought the OP meant THIS kind of “literal” fire drill:
http://blog.emergencyoutdoors.com/bushcraft-making-fire-with-the-bow-drill/
Regarding the OP – I suspect that the alarms are off-the-shelf devices intended for a variety of structures, and that they err on the side of “too loud” so that in large and dense structures most employees ought to hear it. You’d think there would be volume controls, but I don’t know if there are, or how accessible or re-settable they are. But it seems likely “too loud” is the default to be certain people hear it.
Might be so that if one alarm breaks, people can hear one from the next zone over. I worked in a place where ours was broken; they had a fire drill and we never knew about it until people started filing back into the building. Nobody came looking for us, either, to see why we weren’t outside.
Mostly I think they’re loud so that people can’t ignore them, thinking it’s somebody’s cell phone, car alarm, or a toner low error on the printer.
On top of all that, they’re probably also that loud so that if the one in this wing of the building is broken, you’ll hear the next one over. And it’s so loud you’ll eventually give up and go outside just to get away from it.
Also, don’t forget about dorms. In college they were (had to be) loud enough to wake us up.
Of course, that week that they were testing all the smoke detectors and they alarms were ringing, literally, every 30 seconds for an entire week. Maybe they could have disabled the alarms and just had someone monitor the panel while the other guy triggered the smoke detectors. That was pretty awful.
We have tests of the Freaking Alarm System at least weekly in the hospital where I work, sometimes ongoing for minutes at a time.
This must be wonderful for patients hoping to get a few bits of broken sleep in between blood draws, consultants swooping in, technicians administering EKGs and other tests, aides serving highly palatable snacks, visitors etc.
:eek: That can’t be legal, though I guess that’s part of the purpose of fire alarm drills in the 1st place: to test the equipment as well as the people.
I love watching how people respond to them. We had the alarm go off at church once (accidently) during a service. The adults kind of looked around like they didn’t want to leave because they figured it was a drill and someone would tell them what to do. Over in the Sunday school classes (while the teachers where panicking) the kids got in line, walked down the halls, and left the building.
A former boss of mine was trying to get people to take our firedrills seriously so he had people stand at the exits directing people to their waiting area and at a certain point (I think it was 5 mins the first time) he had those people block the doors and took attendance of all those left inside.
He declared them all dead and posted a list on our main board. By the time I left there the time to death was down to 2 mins, no one took the time to grab anything that wasn’t in their hands and our death rate had dropped from 50% to under 10%
If there ever had been a fire in that building he would have been solely responsible for the saving of many lives.
We had designated safety monitors in every work group. They wore hard harts and vests during drills and were responsible for everybody being out of the building. And then checking off that everybody was in the parking lot afterwards. It’s really not that hard a process to organize.
Of course, nothing about this helped when we had a shooting in the building. Yikes.
We had an actual fire (one of the escalators) and I found out about it before the alarm went off because somebody came in the workroom to get their purse, nonchalantly mentioning “hey there’s a fire out there”. Morons. Who the hell sees a real fire and goes to get their purse?!
Of course, had that one been even a tiny bit more serious people would have died from the “only trying to go out the way they came in” problem. There was a huge line of people waiting to go down the other escalator, the one that wasn’t billowing black smoke. Only staff, from what I saw, went down the fire stairs.
At a former job I did software for 911 systems. Some of our jobs required us to go to customer sites, but sometimes we could do the needful work remotely from our comfy desks. On occasion the work I would be doing remotely was an upgrade or software install that required me to take their 911 system down, do the upgrade/install, and then bring it back up again. I would always do this with someone from the client site on the phone with me. It never happened, but I did wonder what fun it would be if the fire alarm went off during one of these times.
“Okay, Bob, now that your system is down and all of your dispatchers are using pen and paper, I’m going to copy the files over… and … crapsorryBobthatshriekisthefirealarmgottagobye!” <click>
Sure, I’d be back on the line 30 minutes later but I’m sure that would just be… frowned upon.
In one of our drills, the safety manager held some people back and told them, “You’ve been overcome by smoke. Don’t go outside, but sit in my office.”
Their department managers still reported “all present and accounted for.” That caused a few red faces.
In another drill, the department manager went back inside, so he could prepare a spreadsheet of everyone who had come outside. He, too, got a bit of a scolding.
I think alarms are painfully loud, so that people will actually get up and go out. Otherwise, about half would just ignore it.
I’d bet there’s some legal requirements. There may also be some market based constraints where it’s easy to buy/install the off the shelf equipment which defaults to being heard in noisier environments.
I had a supervisor position where getting hired got me presented with my very own hearing protection. Only one of my employees was usually in the area where it was required at all times (and I assumed I’d have to get him if there was a real fire.) The rest of the plant had a good level of ambient noise though.
In my office building, the fire alarm goes off on all floors, then you get a verbal message if your floor has to evacuate.
Of course, the good thing of this is that when you hear the alarm, you can grab your purse and car keys and coat, and then get ready to go outside. The bad thing is that the lights and noise continue until the disembodied voice tells you to leave.
ETA: I really hate fire drills because my bum knee hates going down multiple flights of stairs. After the last one at work, my knee was swollen, painful, and generally fucked up for a week. It’s one thing if the building is actually on fire; it’s another if someone decides, “It’s summer, let’s do all of our fire drills in one week!”
We’re always informed in advance of when a fire drill is coming, down to the time. I wonder what would happen if there was a real fire a few minutes before that time; would people casually go out, thinking it’s only a drill?
Last month, we had a shelter-in-place drill; these are now mandated by city law. Employees close (any open) windows & move to the core of the building. Building staff locks all exterior doors (like they do nights/weekends) & shuts down the elevators. No one in or out of the building during the drill.
Decades ago, when I was in elementary school, the principal and teachers were having a pre-school meeting that included fire drill discussions. It was about to end, as children were arriving and going into their classrooms. One teacher mused, “I wonder what would happen if there were a fire drill right now?” “Let’s find out,” said the principal, and activated the fire drill alarm. We all did exactly as we were supposed to, calmly walking out the designated fire exits. Our teacher complimented us later on how well we performed.
That school also used to occasionally block off one of the exits during a drill to test whether we understood how to get to the alternate exits.
I think that’s it. In my condo complex, the alarm is clearly meant to be loud enough to wake someone who is sleeping. When it goes off (which fortunately has been very rare) it is extremely loud. I cannot stand to remain inside with it blaring for more than a few minutes – I simply have to leave.
