why bluepoint? any FA system can take a lockdown pullstation and initiate a lockdown sequence. leverage a life safety system already in place.
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Agreed, Bluepoint is overrated IMO. We are doing just about everything it does with our 4100.
[quote=chris+s post_id=80485 time=1526845741 user_id=3064]
[quote=Housedays post_id=80500 time=1526950126 user_id=2894]
I wonder if any schools have considered activating the fire alarm during some of their lockdown drills while teaching the students to ignore it during the drill.
[/quote]
My middle school did that twice over the course of my three years there, once in 6th grade and once in 7th grade. The first time it happened no one knew what to do, and a bunch of people evacuated, but there was an assembly afterwards to talk about the response to a fire alarm in a lockdown situation. I thought it was crazy at the time, but seeing where we are now, I don’t feel that way anymore.
[quote=Housedays post_id=80500 time=1526950126 user_id=2894]
I wonder if any schools have considered activating the fire alarm during some of their lockdown drills while teaching the students to ignore it during the drill.
[/quote]
I always want to tell the office to do that.
[quote="Simplex 2903-9101" post_id=80499 time=1526945913 user_id=3578]
True or false: Many of the people running the place did everything in their power to make things worse for us.
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False; they are too lazy to fix anything.
[quote=Housedays post_id=80500 time=1526950126 user_id=2894]I wonder if any schools have considered activating the fire alarm during some of their lockdown drills while teaching the students to ignore it during the drill.
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That’s a great idea. I may bring this up next year since I am friends with out facilities manager.
Going with false. If anything, all the teachers and the administration I had in school bent over BACKWARDS to try to accommodate me.
Also when we did lockdowns in high school, as I said before occasionally they would ring the fire alarms. Which probably wasn’t pleasant for students that had to hide in the shop rooms because MOST of them had horns in there (mine didn’t.)
[quote=jelimoore post_id=80510 time=1527016964 user_id=4193]
[quote=Housedays post_id=80500 time=1526950126 user_id=2894]
I wonder if any schools have considered activating the fire alarm during some of their lockdown drills while teaching the students to ignore it during the drill.
[/quote]
That’s a great idea. I may bring this up next year since I am friends with out facilities manager.
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This was done on at least one occasion when I was in high school. To add to the realism of the situation, my high school held lockdown drills during the lunch hour, forcing students and staff to react quickly in a chaotic situation.
My high school never did that and I would wonder exactly how it would have went if they did. They never did fire drills during lunch either. If the fire alarm went off, it was usually because of a smoke detector being activated.
Certain areas require schools to conduct fire drills at random times including during lunch, class change time, assemblies etc. because an actual fire can start at any time of the day. I think some areas also require schools to conduct fire drills during after school activities and community education classes.
My middle school did fire drills during after school activities but they never did it during lunch or class change periods. My high school did lockdown drills and activated the alarms, but never had fire drills during after school activities. Honestly there was a LOT my schools didn’t do. In 13 years of being in the education system, we only had TWO fire drills where one exit was blocked. The first was when I was in second grade (2000) and the second was when I was in eleventh grade (2009). Of course, my high school was in a different district than my elementary and middle school.
I recall a few times in elementary school where we did drills during recess or PE class, and once in 6th grade where we had a fire drill during 8th grade lunch.
My district requires fire drills to be conducted at “unexpected times” under “simulated conditions” and requires one drill per year use the secondary route.
Removing pulls would never work out. You still need some sort of manual activation. Say there’s a fire in an area where someone could see it easily and pull a station, while automatic detection would take much longer. That only adds more damage to the building and more danger to occupants in the building
What about if there were sprinklers that were in more places? Would that work?
[quote="Simplex 4051" post_id=80527 time=1527160513 user_id=18]
What about if there were sprinklers that were in more places? Would that work?
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Probably not. Manual activation is something that cannot be removed, and is VERY important on a fire alarm system
If that is why are they being phased out? I’m getting confused.
Even if manual activation was removed, the shooter could still activate a detector by the test switch or a match, or a sprinkler. There are just too many loopholes.
Most people don’t even know that fire alarm systems even have smoke detectors.
Why not use key activated stations? It seems that would make more sense since the administration/teachers would be able to manually activate the pull stations if there were an actual fire. In addition to this, we can combine two stage systems or pre-alarm verification with this option too for verification.
Another interesting thing is that the administration is constantly telling us to ignore the alarm upon the presence of the general alarm sounding. It’s quite peculiar since they didn’t verify it at all (and were apparently dumb enough to keep resetting the panel before the pull station was reset… :roll: ).
(As a followup…)
I’ve actually emailed our district operations manager to see what they were going to do about our school’s fire alarm system. My high school is on the list to get some major upgrades over the summer and upgrading fire alarms follows the security upgrades. I talked with my principal about it too and he mentioned two-stage and voice evacuation are possibilities, but he’s not sure.
[quote="Simplex 2903-9101" post_id=80614 time=1527639013 user_id=3578]
Most people don’t even know that fire alarm systems even have smoke detectors.
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Yes. People commonly think that the NAs are the smoke detectors.
Here’s what I think ought to happen - and I’ve discussed this with my father who is a school administrator.
Once a year (at the very least) conduct a lockdown drill with a simultaneous fire alarm activation. Instruct students and teachers that the lockdown supersedes the fire alarm, not the other way around. This is similar to how mass notification signals take priority over fire alarm signals in combo fire/MN systems.