A place not to be is in the middle of a heavy metal concert. I bet nobody would hear or see the fire alarms going off.
Seeing or hearing the fire alarm doesn’t prompt people to evacuate anyway. Ever been in a mall or restaurant when the alarm goes off?
They do have a really big PA system at heavy metal concerts…they could very easily just announce it.
I forgot about this set up…
When I was in high school, one of the boys bathrooms would be the worst place to be in when the alarm rang.
The bathroom was located in a lobby-like area leading to the teacher’s lounge for the science, language lab and foreign language buildings. This bathroom was very small. There was a “privacy wall” as you entered the room. There was maybe 6 foot of space between the privacy wall and the wall dividing the bathroom from a classroom. There were 2 stalls shoved in that tiny area with two sinks in front of it and a urinal on either side of the sink. It was a very poorly designed restroom to say the least. And to top it all off, on the wall above the partition dividing the two toilets was a Mircom set on continuous. And on the highest setting possible. We could usually hear it ringing over the 5 horns that were in the hallway. So, I would hate to be in there with it ringing. Let’s just say it was torture for me that one time I had to use a stall, hoping that nothing would happen to cause the alarms to ring.
My old apartment in Santa Cruz. The family room had an AH set to Code 3 at High volume. It was considered a good idea since the walls are fairly well insulated, but it’s not great when you’re sitting right under the damn thing. What’s funny is that they has NS’s in the hallways and lobby. Luckily the alarm only went off twice in my time living there. One was because of bad cooking that vented out into the hallway at 11pm. The other was around 6pm when somebody burnt toast, but a person passing by the apartment smelled smoke and heard the units smoke alarm going off, and took it upon themselves to pull the alarm.
My roommate in that apartment had a senegal parrot where its cage was situated about 6 feet away from the horn. The thing went nuts and almost had a hard attack, then it learned how to imitate it so it would use it to grab the attention of one of my roommates or myself. Senegals are birds with personalities, that’s for sure.
Well in my HS there were three places I wouldn’t have wanted to be in when the alarms went off, which were U-MMTs set to Continuous Horn and did code-3 from the panel. The first place would be, as many of you mentioned, the bathrooms. Those had U-MMTs in them. The other two places in that school were these small rooms on the first and second floor. They were only about 10’x15’, and they had a U-MMT in them too. They were loud enough in regular-sized classrooms. That must’ve been h*** on earth being in either one of those places when they went off
Fortunately however, the strobes always flashed once before the horns sounded. It was nice to have a little warning, since I HATED those horns. On the flip side though, I don’t think there are any fire horns that are louder than the Standard 30As (actually, the Faraday Type 2s might be louder, but they’re probably the only exception)
The old section (built in the lat 60s or early 70s)of the middle school I went to had Notifier fire horns. I never seen those anywhere else before. They were red and the same size as a typical electromechanical horn except they were round. They had the Notifier “N” logo in the middle, that’s how I knew the brand. Those were the loudest alarms I have ever heard. Very starteling when the alarms sound. I remember seeing a teacher jump and drop what she had in her hands when the alarm sounded. The horns were only in the hallway, but it sounded like it was 3 feet away.
My alarm went off unexpectedly from a fog machine test on Saturday… good thing I programmed the piezo on the panel to beep for one second before the alarm activates.
Here’s where I don’t want to be when the fire alarm goes off:
[]In a portable classroom
[]In a classroom with a electromechanical horn (eg. 2901-9833+2903, 450D+VALS)
[]In my high school’s atriums
[]Any large room with loud horn/strobes (gym, cafeteria, auditorium)