Public swimming baths, fire evacuation, subzero weather.

Factual Questions
1

I took my kids swimming yesterday and near the end of our session, the emergency alarm sounded.

We were all asked to get out of the water, which we did. In this case, the emergency was a minor injury in the diving pool - and I suppose the procedure is to get everyone out of the water so that all the guards can be free to help with the incident.

But it got me wondering… suppose that had been a fire alarm?

The building has a substantial timber roof, spanning the entire structure.
We were all in our swimsuits, and wet.
The outdoor temperature was minus 4 centigrade.

Evacuating everyone outdoors in these circumstances would pose some quite serious risks - particularly to small children - although obviously there would be a need to get people away from a fire.

Do public swimming pools in places that experience cold winter weather generally have plans in place to deal with this quandary? If so, what do such plans consist of?

2

I don’t have an answer for swimming pool.

However, when I was in high school in New Hampshire, the fire alarm went off one winter day. We were evacuated outside. I didn’t have my coat with me because it was in the locker in the hallway somewhere else in the building. Let me tell you, that was unpleasant.

3

My youngest son was involved in a minor accident in a nasty winter storm. It was only a couple miles outside of town and I had a 4 wheel drive vehicle so I went and got him. When I got there the firemen had 6 or 8 people inside the fire truck with blankets around them to keep them warm. They were going to drive the people who had no way of getting back into town with them. I was actually surprised how roomy it was in there.

So I guess in a pinch, if they absolutely had to evacuate the building, they could put people in the fire trucks until ambulances and or ambulance buses arrived.

4

I’m not sure the risks are notably higher for small children. I understand, for example, that it’s common for the very young to be the last survivors found in the rubble of buildings damaged by earthquake.

5

Smaller body mass means - I think - they’ll chill faster than adults.

6

We had a fire alarm at work a few weeks ago. It was bitterly cold outside, and when the alarm went off, I had just got changed into shorts and a tee-shirt for a run. I had to evacuate the building whilst bare-footed, put my shoes on once outside, and then decided to just go for my run. It was the easiest way to stay warm, and avoid the comments about my legs from my work colleagues. :rolleyes:

Si

7

In the case of a typical fire, can’t people just stay near the exits but inside? Much less in the case of a typical fire alarm.

I have a feeling this suggestion will be met with be met with more hatred than heliocentrism. (If not by you guys on the boards, then certainly by the people in rl in charge of such things.)

8

I guess it depends on how many people are in the building. If it is a crowded building, having everyone hanging around the exits isn’t going to work too well.

9

Why would that have anything to do with hypothermia? I would think that would have more to do with their small bodies being less likely to get stuck in the rubble.

10

They were stuck in the rubble - but they survived longer than the stuck adults.

11

Kids have a greater surface area/mass ratio, which means they lose heat faster.

From the Merck Manual

12

This was incredibly foolish. If it had been a real fire and they’d taken a roll call you’d have turned up as missing and they would have sent a fireman in to locate you. Firemen have died doing this.

13

You don’t know the circumstances. I work in a building with 1300 people (mostly professionals) and we come and go as we please plus there are a huge number of emergency exits. There is no way to do a role call so I would have just left as well if I were in that situation. All they do during fire drills is sweep the building which isn’t hard because most of it is a large, open floor plan.

14

Si isn’t a dumbass, I’m betting he reported present at the muster point, then went for a run.

15

Please provide a cite to at least one occurence of a fireman dying after going into an office building after someone who skipped a “roll call.”

16

I used to be a fire officer at a large-ish office in London. That doesn’t make me any sort of expert, of course, I was trained only in clearing everyone from the building and a few very basic firefighting procedures, like when to use and not use an extinguisher.

Anyhow, with potentially 800 people in the building, no-one took a roll call. We would check that the floor was clear, then report to the senior fire officer: “Eighth floor is clear!” That person would tell the firefighters. Of course, if someone said “John Smith was with us, but we haven’t seen him since flames erupted from the windows” then that would be different. But there’s no way we could take a register of every single person who may or may not have been inside.

17

I can not give specifics, but durring my fire safety director class it was stressed by by the teacher to get an accurate count on people. According to him several firemen die every year going into buildings to retreave people who were not there. He was a former Chief of the SFFD.

18

That would be impossible where I work and with many companies that I have worked for in the past or I am familiar with. I hardly ever know where my coworkers are or even my boss and vice versa and we like to keep it that way unless there is a true emergency and even that might take an hour to respond to. There is no need for firefighters to get concerned if one of us is missing for a few minutes.

19

IIRC, Cecil did a bit a while back about how being wet won’t make you any more likely to catch a cold, but I can’t find it.

20

Perhaps it won’t make you more likely to catch an infection. However, being wet definitely will cause your body to cool down and cause hypothermia much more quickly than a dry body. That is how sweating works, afterall.