Today we had what can only be described as a major failure with our drill. It wasn’t anything that the staff or students did wrong. After the principal made the announcement to tell us we were starting the drill, he pressed the alarm button. Unfortunately, the Siemens dealers messed up the programming for it at some point in the last year when they were making system adjustments, and they changed the lockdown button to trigger the fire message. The strobes did not activate, though. This caused a lot of confusion. I really hope they fix this soon. If the fire alarm goes off again, people aren’t going to know what to do.
What are the A/Vs? Too bad the dealers wired it up wronf
I don’t think it’s wired wrong, as it worked properly last year. I think the Siemens dealer messed up something in the programming of the system when they were changing detector sensitivities a few months ago. I don’t know anything about Siemens programming, but I’m thinking that they accidentally changed the file for the voice message that is activated when that addressable point for the lockdown push station goes into alarm. I really hope they fix it soon. I’d honestly say that, in an emergency situation, no alarm is better than the wrong alarm.
Here is the system:
Were still out of school, been for 2 weeks!!
From the snow??? We didn’t get any, but the most we’ve ever been out from a big snow storm was 4 days. We usually get a lot of snow, but I guess it went to you guys this year.
I used to live in the midwest where we wouldn’t bat an eye to snow. Since moving further south where snow is far less common, I’ve come to learn that it can really shut things down. Where I live now, most municipalities besides larger cities do not have snow plows, but the state or some counties do. Salt is also a rarity around here.
For this reason, when snow and ice storms come through, the time it takes to clear the roadways is much longer. In many cases I’ve seen the overwhelming majority of snow and ice melt from exposure to the sun before a plow ever comes by, but then there’s the complication of shady spots which don’t melt, or temperatures drop cold enough overnight to re-freeze by the morning, making conditions dangerous again by morning.
This is a long winded way of me saying: Yes the issue is likely snow. This year we’ve seen states that see very little snow get a couple good sized storms back to back, resulting in extensive closures. Kind of crazy!
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Well, were back, been out for 2 weeks, my county school district is still closed. roads look clear, still patchy. my driveway is ALL ice.
It all turned into black ice, i broke my arm because of it.
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So I do know this is kinda late but I haven’t been on the forums a month or two now cuz I’m dealing with life and mental health.
So I recently had a fire drill at my school, I will make a separate post about the history of my school and the system, they recently replaced part of the system but I did get a video of the drill…
Pretty cool system eh?
EDIT: Sorry For All The Jump Cuts In The Video Lol
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I was staying after school today to help with sound/lighting for a more “casual” band concert (middle school bands performing in the commons area of my highschool). Around 30 minutes into the show, security came up to the booth and asked if we were doing anything that could replicate the smell of gas. We weren’t, so they left and we didn’t hear from them. I had to go to the auditorium to check on something ~30 minutes later, and I did distinctly smell gas, and saw maintenance workers going around with a gas meter. Right as I was about to enter the auditorium, they began shouting saying there was a gas leak and everyone needed to evacuate immediately. I was told to run and tell everyone inside the auditorium/adjacent rooms to evacuate. When I entered the auditorium, the fire alarm began sounding (presumably pulled by a maintenance worker) and I made sure everyone got out. When the fire department arrived on scene, they silenced the alarm and we were notified that the gas company was over an hour away, and we would not be cleared to re-enter the building tonight.
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I know a gas leak happened at my former elementary school a couple of years ago. My brother was still there, so I know what they did. They didn’t sound the fire alarm, but they made an evacuation announcement over the Audio Enhancement EPIC intercom system, all of the students were evacuated to the football field, and the parents were notified to come and pick up their children.
This happened after school hours, but it seems to be a more common issue in the building. There was a gas leak two summers ago that cancelled orientation for the class of 2028, and a gas leak in the building a year before that.
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I remember when I was in elementary school, there was often a smell of gas in the music room, which was adjacent to the main boiler/mechanical room. Nothing was ever done about it while I was there. It apparently got bad enough that day to warrant the evacuation.
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Today we had the second false fire alarm of the school year. Around 10:15 the alarms began sounding and everyone began to evacuate. I walked past the annunciator on the way out and it read “UNDERGROUND TRACK MECHANICAL ROOM 048FH”. I’m guessing it was a smoke detector falsely activating. Our first false alarm was because of the showers in the pool locker rooms getting too steamy and setting off the smoke detectors in there. Interestingly, the alarm was silenced before the FD arrived. The building was cleared very quickly which leads me to believe that there was work going on in that room and they knew that there was no danger. The system also had a trouble upon leaving today, completely unrelated saying something about “FIELD HOUSE PULL STATION WEST”. The system always has intermittent troubles, supervisories and monitor conditions pop up (around once a week) but they are usually resolved within the day.