Well, it looks like work tomorrow will be a repeat performance from February 19th!
A 15 minutes before I left today, the building director stepped out of the office and when he came back a few minutes later, he said they would be testing the alarms tomorrow and that we don’t need to evacuate if/when they go off. Hopefully my anxiety will comply tomorrow, as I really need the money, and I won’t be working Wednesday due to doctor’s appointments. I’ll remember to bring my camera though!
P.S., the director didn’t know how to say “fire alarms”, and said “gongs” instead (which is what the alarm used to be before the upgrade). I corrected him and said “You mean the fire alarms?” and he said “Yeah.”
Well, sorry guys, but I ended up missing everything by mere minutes. Infact, I ended up running into the techs as they were leaving. My co-worker tells me they had the alarms ringing for 15 minutes. Evidentally, this was a test to make sure all the signals worked.
But yeah, I ended up missing everything, so now I can relax a bit.
A couple of pics from today. One is of a smoke detector I discovered while on my way to my history class:
The outer part of the head was just ripped right off and is no where to be found. The system was in trouble, but not because of this detector.
Second, I guess when they tested the signals in the main part of the campus center, they tested the signals in the extension too. Because when I ate in the food court today, I discovered 2 of the bell/strobes looked like this:
Last time I saw those orange stickers was at MHS, and they were on 2 smoke detectors. A couple of weeks later, the detectors were replaced w/ TrueAlarms. I guess some of the retrofit plates are in need of a replacement…
WELL, whoever said life sure has a way of throwing you curveballs was right today. When the semester started, I e-mailed the Environmental Health and Safety department asking for upcoming drills in any of the buildings I had classes in that had horn/strobes installed. That would be Humanities, Earth Science, and Business Administration. The business administration was supposed to have a drill today at 10:15, and it did.
Now here’s the curveball. My spanish class is said to have been in the Humanities building (room 32), BUT, evidentally, the part I was in had is alarm components wired to the Education building next door, and they had a drill at 10:00. I did take a vid and I’ll post it later. The AS in the room I was in didn’t activate for some reason, which I can’t imagine being good. But, I’m glad it didn’t, otherwise, I’d have jumped out of my skin when it went off. IDK why they installed ASs all over the place like they did, because despite the alarm in the room not going off, you could hear the alarm in the hallway just fine (and the door was shut too). All that is really needed in the rooms are remote strobes…
I think Simplex fire alarm installers often add alarms all over the place. The South Junior High School, when it had its Simplex 4100U fire alarm system installed in 2003, they put TrueAlert speaker/strobes all over the place, including one in each classroom. Then again, it’s a voice-evac system, and I’m betting it’s not as loud as the old Edwards system was, with 360-L flush-mount horns, mounted only in hallways and huge rooms.
Man, I’m lucky that at my college, when they upgrade the fire alarms there (they’re still doing so), they’re not putting the VA4 horn/strobes or U-HNH-MCSs in the classrooms. That would be TORTURE! They only install them where the old alarms once were, and that’s typically in the hallways. But then again, the room where we have our drama club meetings has a VA4 in there, but probably because there used to be a Simplex 4051+80 horn/light in there. And as if that weren’t enough, the radio production rooms each have an alarm in them. And these rooms are smaller than the bathrooms! The FM radio studio has a VA4 in it, and the Radio Production room has a 4051+80 in there (but not for long, it’s probably gonna get replaced this summer).
Interestingly enough, in the buildings that have Simplex signals installed, the audible/strobes are installed in the hallways, and only remote strobes are installed in the classrooms. It’s only the Wheelock buildings that have the audible/strobes installed EVERYWHERE (except in bathrooms and individual offices).
And you’re right - speakers aren’t as loud as horns, so I would be perfectly fine w/ a speaker/strobe in the room (providing it’s not set at a blasing volume).
Most of the classrooms over here that have fire alarms are only there because of how big the room is. Most of the shops have 9838s in them (the Cosmo Rooms have two, one for each room). Business Technology (my shop) has a pull station, but no alarm (except the exit door Detex alarm, which sounds like a TrueAlert). The Aquaculture Rooms have a Wheelock ASWP mounted on the side and a 9219 inside and the Student Assessment Center has a SAE+2DCD horn. (must be horrible in there).
Today’s 2 lucky buildings: the main library and Humanities. I knew about the humanities one, but I didn’t know about the library. My spanish class was in the lecture centers today, and the part I was in overlooks the library, so while I was wating for my spanish professor, I looked outside and I saw the outdoor strobe on the building flashing. I almost got caught up in the humanities one though. It was scheduled for 11:35 and my journalism class let out at like 11:30 and my professor asked me to go to his office after class to discuss this paper proposal and his office was in the humanities building, but as luck would have it, it was already going off by the time we got there.
I swear, they must have figured out that you don’t need to silence the systems in order to reset them because usually they silence it, let the strobes flash for like 30 seconds, and then reset the system, but lately, they just shut everything off at once. It’s fine w/ me, since you can’t go in as long as the strobes are flashing, but people go in reguardless (as the did during the physics building drill earlier this year), it’s just weird to see it done, knowing that they just plain reset it instead of silencing it…
While I’m at it, I shot this photo yesterday in the library:
He was going around and testing all the initiating devices. Here he’s seen activating a smoke, but he also went around opening all the pull stations as well. The system must have also been in a self-test mode as he seemed to be by himself (he wasn’t talking to anyone over a walkie-talkie or anything), plus, as soon as he activated the device, he went right on to the next one, and as for the smokes, the LED would stay lit for like 2 minutes, and then it’d go out again…
Strangely enough, it was in the main library. I was 2 seconds away from printing something out when it went off. Needless to say, I couldn’t hang around because my class started in 15 minutes, and I still had yet to print out my paper, so I had to abandon the scene and go to another building to print it out. I didn’t bother getting a vid or recording as my mind was focused on other matters. IDK if it was a drill or not. I assume it was because when I got to the front, the annunciator showed the system already acknowledged, which is usually a sign that it is a drill, since when a drill takes place, they acknowledge it right away, and it didn’t seem to go on for too long, but when I left the campus center after printing out what I had to print out, I heard lots of sirens, and they sounded close. I’ll have to see if it shows up on the crime and incident page in a couple of days. If it does, I’ll know it wasn’t planned.
Two alarms (well, one bing a drill) in 8 days. I think that’s my best record yet!
I noticed you updated the page for “Voice Evac-type 2” on your website, mentioning it does the same sound as the buildings with the Wheelock E70s. I take it you finally heard the fire alarm system in the Arts and Sciences Building go off?
I heard some of it when the building had it’s drill earlier this week (Tuesday). I was on my way to my journalism class in the building next door and when I walked by, I saw the strobes flashing and people coming out. Once I got to the door, the slow whoop sound began sounding constantly, so I just assumed that it’s programmed like the rest of the buildings are. The system was installed around the same time they upgraded the Podium (early-mid 2001), so I guess it’s programmed the same, but they just used different signals.
Type 3 is the RACC, which is now known as the SEFCU Arena. I need to take more pictures from there before I can put up the page. So far all I have of it is a remote speaker. Once classes let out for the summer I’ll swing by and get more pics. And just as an FYI, I discovered the system was installed around 1992, which SORT OF explains the lack of strobes in a lot of places…
Well, I said I had something to say in the emergency drills topic, so here it is: we have a malicious alarm puller on the loose! I went into the library today and found this sign at the main entrance. Evidentally, someone’s been pulling the alarm in the library a lot. So I’m betting those drills I listed for the library aren’t really drills, but false alarms, and another occured on the 3rd, so that’s 3 known false alarms so far this month (w/ those 3 occuring over the span of a week). IDK if there were any more because the UAPD hasn’t updated the incident log yet. Hopefully they will soon so I’ll know more about the incidents. Hopefully this person a: wises up and quits their BS, or the cops find out who he is so they can put an end to his/her actions…
I hope nothing like that is the reason why there was that false fire alarm two weeks ago at my college in the T Building. But I heard a screeching noise like an electronic fire alarm would have today, so I hope it wasn’t an alarm being caused by a malicious puller. He’s obviously never seen this G.I. Joe PSA…
Well, the police log has been updated, and I now know just how serious the false alarm situation in the library is: it was pulled 6 times over a span of 13 days:
4/3 @ 5:55 PM
4/8 @ 8:30 AM
4/10 @ 8:36 AM (the one I was caught up in), and again later that day @ 3:26 PM
4/13 @ 6:05 PM
4/15 @ 3:34 PM
It only lists the location of activation for 1/2 of the incidents, but of the locations it lists, each one was different.
