I wish I had the cite, but I read a fascinating piece one time about how people commonly ignore not only a fire alarm but even an actual fire right in front of them.
The article included a video from England in which a surveillance camera caught a kid setting fire to a display of potato chips and such inside a small convenience store. The fire spread pretty quickly, engulfing the display. The video showed people nonetheless continuing to enter the store, walking right by the fire near the doorway. They would scoot away from it, maybe gesture like “wow, there’s a fire here” and then go into the store to buy candy or whatever. And this was a small, confined space that was about to completely go up in flames. They’d complete their transaction (with the clerk who also wasn’t reacting apparently) and then scoot by the fire again on the way out. This went on for several minutes. It was amazing to watch.
Anyway, the point of the article was that people are stupid when it comes to structure fires and can’t be trusted to save themselves even when you clearly notify them that the place is on fire and they could die. Because of that, some fire alarms are designed to be not just loud but intentionally annoying, the kind of grating, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sound that you just can’t stand for long rather than a gentle “bong, bong, please leave the building.”
My experience with commercial fire alarms is that they’re just like that – not just loud as hell but so damn unpleasant you want to exit the building just to get away from them.
I worked at the local community college where we once had a REAL fire alarm (smoke drifting in the halls) and a REAL tornado warning, both at the same time. For the first, we’re supposed to leave the building, for the latter we’re supposed to move toward the center of the building.
Places really need to do more fire drills, and implement them if they don’t have them already.
My sister and I work in a distribution warehouse; she’s been there for 3+ years, and I’ve been there nearly a year; there’s never been a drill.
We recently had an actual fire. I was loading a trailer when the alarm went off, and came racing out. My crew and the people working a bit down from the shipping area where standing around looking dumbfounded. I had to shout at them to get the fuck out, the building’s on fire.
Most of them then walked a quarter mile to get out the main exit, instead of going out the emergency exit that was 500 ft away.
25% of the people in the building didn’t evacuate at all, as they didn’t think it was an actual emergency.
The National Fire Protection Association publishes a set of codes regulating among other things fire alarm systems. Most municipalities follow these codes.
There are two common types of notification devices. Audio/visual devices include a horn and a flashing strobe. There is no way to alter the volume of the horn. Visual devices only have a flashing strobe. The brightness of the strobe can be changed. Depending on the size of the space the strobe can be set between 15 and 115 candela. Audio/visual devices are mostly found in common areas, i.e. hallways, foyers, cafeterias etc. Visual devices can be found in common areas as well as spaces such as offices and restrooms. The amount of audio/visuals devices varies based on the size of the space. There is a minimum decibel level that must be met.
When testing a fire system the notification circuit must be run long enough to verify that all devices are working and in sync. In most cases there will be three short horn bursts synced with three strobe flashes. If the devices are not synced the building would look like a club on a Friday night with all the strobe flashes. After the notification circuit has passed testing the tester SHOULD disable the circuit when testing pull stations, smoke detectors, heat sensors etc. otherwise you’ll hear the damn alarm going off all day.
Yes, I am an alarm installer. I am not your alarm installer. Please consult am alarm installer in your area if you have specific questions regarding the alarm codes in your town.
And since this is the Pit, the alarm is so damn loud so you’ll get your lazy ass up and out of the building. We’re only trying to save lives here, morons.
In emergency situations people usually don’t know what to do.
My first year in the business world I was working in a 30-some story office building downtown and we had a tornado warning. Procedure for the warning is to go to the center of the building where the elevators are and close the hallway doors so you are away from the windows and flying things.
My boss and I were the only ones from my department there because half the people were looking at the thunderstorm clouds.
I told him I was on the schedule for that’s month’s safety meeting, I would cover tornado safety, and would show what a tornado can do to a skyscraper.
So has anyone done research on how much effect fire drills have on making people act casual and reluctant during a real fire? It seems to me that you shouldn’t need many. You always know the quickest route out of a building from where you are, so all you’d need to learn are secondary exits.
When I was in college I was with several friends about 15 stories up in a high rise dorm. The fire alarm went off and - dumb college kids! - we ignored it, because there were drills all the time and we just assumed this was another one.
Someone finally opened the door to the hallway, maybe to see why the alarm hadn’t stopped ringing yet, only to discover the hallway was filling up with smoke. Yeah, we got our asses in gear then.
As it turned out, the fire was real but incredibly minor - someone about two flights down from our location had left a steak cooking on the stove and forgotten all about it. Nonetheless, it taught me a valuable lesson - don’t ignore it just because you think it’s a drill.
A secondary lesson (and hopefully one that has been learned in the years since that story took place) is that institutions need to not overdo it with drills. Yes, do drills often enough so that people get practice and you can look for flaws in the system. But don’t do them so frequently that people shrug their shoulders and ignore them.
And yet, the last time I was in a fire drill, it took longer than usual. The headcount wasn’t coming out quite right but, since most of the building was a college dorm and one of the wings was a hotel, part of the problem was in making sure they had the right number. “Please don’t move from group to group, we need to count heads…”
And out walks this woman, dressed to the nines, her hair wet and freshly combed. The head fireman pronounced her dead. She said “oh, but how was I supposed to leave? I had just begun showering!” “OK, so you’re dead in the shower. Your corpse is dead and naked.”
Congratulations on being one of the people who track that part I underlined; most don’t.
I was at the library one afternoon and they had an unannounced fire drill. I was amazed at the number of idiots who felt the need to whinge to the staff. Their common refrain seemed to be that fire drills shouldn’t happen while the public are there. The staff had great difficulty remaining polite while pointing out the stupidity of this idea.
Why would you always know the quickest route out? One of the problems is that people will try to go out the same way they came in even though it’s often not the quickest way out, because they’ve never paid attention to where the alternative exits are.
Tornado warnings are a good example of how too many false alarms can make people complacent. The false alarm rate is something like 75%, and even in the 25%, most of those tornadoes are incredibly small and only impact a tiny fraction (sub-1%) of the warned area. Eventually, when most of the tornadoes never materialize and most of those that do are EF0s that never come within 20 miles of most people in the warning, people stop caring.
I keep a closer watch on the weather during a tornado warning, but all it really means to me is “oh, I guess there’s a thunderstorm coming.”
Even worse than false-alarms or routine drills are when the tornado sirens DON’T go off until 7-8 minutes after tornado hits (for example, the few-months-ago tornado that leveled a portion of a Moore, OK neighborhood). I was watching one of the newschannels that had its helicopter providing live viewing of the tornado, and weatherguy kept saying ~“Why aren’t the sirens there going off?!?!” with live-video of wind damage/power-flashes prior to the arrival of funnel as he detailed location/direction of more than one tornadic cell - busy man, he was, LOL.
My daughter had to take some school tests in Moore several days after that 'nado and where she took tests was just two blocks away from edge of where the serious damage happened. I overheard a lot of pissed-off talk from locals there about how effed up it was to hear warning sirens finally sounding about 7-8 minutes after funnel had passed over them. I also know of two funnels that went near Seminole, OK maybe 5-6 years ago and the sirens did not go off at all in relevant areas - though sirens did function as designed at other times when funnels were imminent. Lots of BS excuses from various govt entities, of course, but I hear they conduct testing(s) a LOT more often of the system(s).
I’d much, much rather hear those sirens (or doing fire-alarm drills) go off routinely for testing purposes, truth be told. With everyone that has Internet connection and/or TV, it is EASY to see where shit might hit fan, so to speak, with weather tech being what it is nowadays. I depend more on professional weatherfolk and the ‘spotters’ a heck of a lot more than the sirens. Testing the system(s) is something important, IMHO. Better safe than sorry with fire and/or weather stuff!
When sirens turn out to be ‘false-alarms’, at least folks can be aware that something might be happening and to check it out and react as needed. Even if no funnel actually develops, it is very possible that a ‘gustnado’ (super-strong linear winds, often with large hail, in Okie terms) will happen, and a person can secure loose stuff outside their home or find some kind of shelter if in a vehicle somewhere.
What kind of shitty hotel is this? Is it really too much to expect that they shouldn’t ask people to publicly humiliate themselves unless they’ve got a damn good reason for it?
That particular one is actually campus accomodations. Part of a university. Not open to the general public. You need to have business at the university to rent a room there.
But how is it humiliating to get your ass out of the shower? I’ve had to evacuate normal hotels several times due to alarms going off (all of them, caused by someone trying to turn the shower into a sauna) and nobody seemed to have a problem with being around in our oh-so-sexy…
bathrobes and naked feet,
bathrobe with military-style boots,
huge T-shirt inherited from ex,
pajamas shared between husband and wife…
and so forth.
Having once watched some highly spectacular flames coming out of the windows of our home’s top floor apartment (children plus matches plus sofa), somebody alive in a bathrobe, a towel or nothing is a lot better than someone dead. Do you comprehend dead?
I think that a lot of people in this thread would be interested in The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley. She delves into not only how people respond to emergencies, but also why.
One of the most interesting things is that while there’s a fairly widespread perception that panic is a likely response, panic is actually fairly rare. On the contrary, apathy is much more likely–and potentially deadly–than panic. “Nobody else is doing anything, so it must not be serious.”
Several of the stories of actual events in this thread have been along that same line.
My workgroup is now located in a standalone building. There’s one entrance with layers of security (needing a card) & a loading dock. Plus several emergency exits that will generate alarms if used when there’s no drill going on. We definitely had to be taught where these exits were located; seeing them as you walk by does not really register.
Moving into a newly repurposed building with multiple alarm systems mean’s we’ve gone through multiple drills. Which I can understand except for that time the institutional response crew couldn’t turn off the alarm–one of those especially annoying ones.
If the drill happens while I’m at my desk (& it always has), I grab my purse on the way to the nearest emergency exit. And a coat (from the back of my chair) if there is one; in Houston, there often isn’t.
Back in high school, there was a problem with people pulling the fire alarm to get out of tests and such (these were kids who already had records, so the idea of more jail wasn’t much of a deterrent).
After a lot of that, the teachers got pissed at losing class time over the false alarms–so they said “fuck this” and kept teaching during the…ahem…unplanned fire drills, as they came to be known.
So the school openly changed the alarm to go off a helluva lot louder so that nobody would want to stay in the building with it.
It also worked as (finally) a deterrent against pulling it unnecessarily, as kids suddenly decided that the tests were no longer outweighed by the alternative, which now included potential deafness and getting beat up by other kids who would rather take a test than go deaf.
