Well, it happened again; my school had another false fire alarm today.
I was sitting in my 6th period Geometry class when the alarm went off. There was some confusion on where to go because it is a new semester and we have new classes, but everyone eventually got out in a reasonable amount of time. Luckily, it wasn’t too cold out today (38°F). In the previous days in weeks, the windchill has regularly been getting down to -20°F where I live.
This brings up another interesting topic of discussion. Had this happened when it was dangerously cold outside, we would have sheltered in place until we see signs of danger or the staff tells us to evacuate. In that case, going outside would be a far greater risk than staying inside- especially with the modern, code-compliant building that we are now in.
At this point, I’ve lost count. This is at least our tenth false alarm so far this school year. Luckily, this is our first false alarm in quite awhile because they have implemented a policy with the construction workers where they must cover smoke detectors that could possibly be triggered. The school is now putting the bill for any false alarms that they cause on them. They have also installed STI stoppers over all of the extremely easy to activate Siemens XMS-S pull stations. That has certainly helped as they haven’t had any issues with those since. Unfortunately, I don’t know the cause of today’s alarm but it was almost certainly related to construction, especially since they are now adding devices to the Auditorium which is still under construction.
This system has also constantly been in trouble, supervisory, or both since the day the building opened. I have only seen it normal once. This is also because they are slowly installing parts of the system as more parts of the building open.
Jeez…sounds like something needs to be done to get those false alarms under control & to thus avoid alarm fatigue! (which as we’ve seen before can be dangerous)
Yeah, they definitely do need to fix the issues. Based on their performance elsewhere, I blame most of the issues on the ignorance and incompetence of the construction workers and managers not thinking about what issues their work will cause rather than the Fire Alarm system itself. One example of these construction workers and managers’ incompetence is that they installed the basketball hoops in the gym in the wrong places so they weren’t lined up with the lines on the floor. That’s just one example of many. Luckily, they have fixed all of their mistakes and seem to do pretty amazing work when they do it correctly.
Also, it was kind of funny in my class when the alarm went off. Everyone (including myself and the teacher) was completely focused on their work. When the alarm went off, despite us having heard the sound an excessive amount of times in the past, we didn’t realize what it actually was until a few seconds later when the strobes started flashing and the voice evac started speaking rather than just playing the temporal tone. This really shows how multiple signals (in this case an audible tone, audible voice instructions, and visual strobe) can work together to make the most effective possible warning system.
I did definitely notice signs of alarm fatigue. Nobody really thought it was a real alarm. I even heard someone say, “It’s probably just those construction workers again”. Luckily, it isn’t really a problem in the school setting because everyone is required to evacuate whether or not they want to or think they need to. If this were anywhere else, it would be a huge issue.
It was also kind of fun because our evacuation rout took us past the annunciator at the front door (I have absolutely no idea where the main panel is located in the building). I saw the lights and the LCD backlight lit up and the piezo was sounding in a continuous tone rather than the pulsing “trouble” signal that it is sounding half of the time. Unfortunately, I was on the opposite side of the entrance so I couldn’t read the screen.
Having been on the other side of that situation more times than I care to mention, if it’s construction related I can say it’s a bit of a tricky situation with no easy solution, other than putting off construction during school/work hours which is usually not an option.
Ideally, the school and general contractor should be figuring out what work is happening at what times, and arranging for their fire alarm service company to come in and disable the smokes as needed. Because it’s usually a smoke detector that goes off in those areas due to dust, welding, carpentry work, or anything else that can create particles in the air.
We had another false alarm today. They had opened up the temporary walls to the auditorium where they are still doing construction. They put dust covers on all of the smoke detectors in the surrounding areas, but the dust and smoke ended up spreading to a different area of the building where the detectors were not covered.
At 10:02 AM, I was ready to leave my second period class (the bell rings at 10:03 AM). Around 10 seconds before the bell rang, I saw a strobe flash. Before I even had time to process that, the evac message started playing and the strobes continued flashing. We immediately went outside, but we were out there for less than a minute. Before everyone was even out, they had called us back in.
As we were walking back towards the school, I still saw strobes flashing through the windows. Because this is a new system with no audible silence, I knew that this meant that the alarm was still sounding. We got inside and actually got to our next classes on time just as the bell rang. The alarm was silenced and reset a few minutes later. This was pretty cool because I got to walk through the hallways and sit in class with the alarm going off.
I would love to record it, but my school unfortunately has an extremely strict “no cell phones, and especially no recording “ policy. I actually tried to make ab audio recording of the first fire drill of the year by leaving my phone recording all class period in my backpack, but they actually were having issues with the system at the time so they couldn’t get the signals to go off. Our drills are usually announced, but we haven’t had any drills other than that unsuccessful one this year because the false alarms count as drills. If we ever have an announced drill that I’m prepared for, I’ll see what I can do while staying within the rules.