My high school has Simplex TrueAlert speaker/strobes. I have worked at the school for nearly 2 years and have never heard them sound.
During fire drills there is first a manual PA announcement saying that they are doing a fire drill and then a ding over the PA speakers followed by an automated voice giving instructions. The fire alarm is never sounded during the drills.
They had a fire drill today and never sounded the fire alarm. They just gave instructions over the PA system.
Same kind of nonsense that the school mentioned in this topic is pulling huh? You oughta have the local AHJ put a stop to that as that’s potentially dangerous (& of course not the way fire drills are supposed to be done at all).
honestly messed up, you havve to sound the alarm!!
Likely no pun intended but it’s still funny 
didnt get r/woosh… thats no pun
Yeah: I didn’t even realize that might be a pun, heh.
Depending on your jurisdiction, the codes might not require the alarm to be sounded. I believe both NFPA and IFC require the alarm to be sounded during the drill, but there may be local amendments.
Surprisingly, I actually think that school in the linked thread is fully compliant, which I explained at the end of that thread.
At my high school during fire drills they make a PA announcements followed by in a robotic voice “ding! This is a drill evacuation. This is a drill evacuation. Everyone is to go to their designated evacuation zones.” or something like that over the PA speakers.
Oh? Alright. I still say that what that school & the school in this topic are doing ought to be banned though, because that is not how you ensure students know what the fire alarm sounds like & what to do if they hear it.
That’s another thing: perhaps drills should never be announced as such so that occupants respond to them in the same way as an actual alarm, which is of course important. Your school doesn’t actually use the fire alarm system during fire drills either huh?
No, my high school does not sound the fire alarm for fire drills. I have never heard the Simplex TrueAlert speaker/strobes go off and don’t even know what sound they are set to.
That basically makes the system completely pointless since not including it in fire drills means students won’t be familiar with the alarm & what to do when they hear it like I said.
This school, sure, but for the other school, according to the NFPA 101 handbook information immediately after 14.7.2.5 and 15.7.2.5, mixing regular drills with the "training programs” has the potential to lead to superior performance compared to just doing drills (e.g. by showing students different evacuation routes from parts of the building they might not normally be in). The training programs are only allowed to be done after 4 regular drills are done first (which is why the school does regular drills in the fall), and by that point, students are expected to already know how to respond to the alarm. The use of training programs requires AHJ approval, so the AHJ has presumably evaluated the effectiveness and determined that they will be equivalent to regular drills.
I’m not sure why, but NFPA 101 does not seem to require the alarm to be sounded for drills in day care occupancies (but to be clear, this high school is almost certainly an educational occupancy, where the alarm is required to be sounded). One possible reason is that if the alarm is sounded during every drill, then people may be less serious when they hear the alarm in a real emergency.
r/ihavereddit
Also what’s a fire drill without fire alarms? You have to know what the alarm sounds like so you know when they go off you have to get out.
Drills are perfect “mind training” for when it actually goes off, you know what to do. Not setting the alarm off for a drill ruins that dynamic altogether. Carson has a point!
They could have used speaker/strobes with the walkie-talkie intercom thing that police/SROs could use, but that is expensive as they offer special features.
Since my high school has speaker/strobes maybe it is not as important to sound them during drills since they give instructions on what to do when they sound. If a school has horns, they should definitely be sounded during fire drills.