Fire drills are good, but if Walmart never warned shoppers “There will be a fire drill” or “That was only a drill”, people may tend to not evacuate if there was a real alarm. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Many people would likely run off and drive away, meaning Walmart would need more employees to restock all the abandoned carts when that happened. It would also not serve too useful because there is really no way to line everyone up and count them like in schools. Did they evacuate quickly? Did they ignore the alarm? Did they… etc.? Those questions are only answerable in a supervised environment.
In my opinion, they should be rare and unannounced. But people should really be educated about fire safety in school. They should also pull the alarm and have a “hands-on” experience.
For example: BEEP BEEP BEEP Alright class, that is the fire alarm is going off right now. Please line up and leave the classroom. Instead of waiting a month or two before an actual drill to take place. Then we would not need to have random drills as common.
I think that your idea is fine, but it would kind of be an annoyance to have fire drills randomly in a store. Also, in my area, most stores have hidden or unmarked alarms, so people would be even more confused.
For stores the drills wouldn’t be so much for the shoppers, but more for training the employees what to do in case of an emergency. They would then know, for example, what areas to “sweep” during a fire alarm since, like you said, the shoppers would be confused. So I guess in the case of a Walmart, the employee drills could take place after hours to avoid inconveniencing the shoppers.
Walmart officials are probably hesitant to evacuate because that would lead to stealing (and possible looting of the empty building). Plus, mass evacuation takes a very long time, especially out of a few doors.
I have kind of a rough solution to this, which is if you make pre-recorded messages by the store manager, like we said, but also playing music or something that will catch the attention of the occupants. People will pay attention and follow something more interesting. It may potentially keep the occupants under a little more control when there is something more calm and happy then your typical, sober sounding EVAC voice.
Lol. When I say they are sober, I don’t mean that they sound super serious, just they usually don’t catch the attention of the occupants, but if something like music is added in, it may grab the attention of the occupants. They will then want to follow it. Plus if it keeps them in a calmer manner, they will evacuate the building quicker and more orderly, not in a rush and cluttered.
There was a voice evacuation message that either Wheelock or Fire-Lite made (I can’t remember) that said something like this:
“May I have your attention please. A fire emergency has been reported in the building. While this is being verified, please, stand by for further instructions”
and then it played some music.
No, there was no music incorperated into a fire alarm system. Perhaps they building used a shared PA system. But no fire alarm system has ever or will ever play music.
It was a hobbyist, and it was a System Sensor speaker strobe. I may have been wrong about there actually being a voice evacuation message with music, as I haven’t found any such message on Wheelock or Fire-Lite’s website.
Back to the “use bells for new installations” suggestion, I think they would be okay to install for new installations as long as they are installed in a large open place, like a gym. I remember in elementary school, the phone would be tied to an external bell so the coaches in the gym could know when the phone was ringing. It used to be a speaker, but sometime between my fourth or fifth grade year, I think, they installed an 8-inch bell. I have no idea if it was AC or DC, but it sure got my attention when it rang, even with the cacophonous sounds of screaming children. (By the way, the bell pulsed a .25 second on, .25 second off, .25 second on, 1 second off pattern until the phone was answered or it went to the answering machine).
There’s a reason that bell installation has been deprecated. Electronic horns are much cheaper, standard, more reliable, and more attention-grabbing (at least, in an effective design).
Sounds like an AC bell wired directly to the phone line. A phone line transmits AC current when it rings, and it seems to me that the coding you specified is common in PBX installations, or at least older ones.
