The elementary school that I went to had Simplex 2801-9838 horns on 4903-9105 strobe plates. The panel was a Simplex 4007es. (I’m assuming the original panel was a 4002) In second grade, I was in my classroom doing school work and my principal was also in my classroom talking with my teacher. Coincidentally, the fire alarm went off while he was in my classroom. It was obviously not a drill because he was in our classroom. He immediately ran out the door and down the hallway towards the office. We all went outside and were out there for about 2 hours before the fire department got everything taken care of and let us back in. When we got back in, there was a very bad smell. It turns out that something started smoking and sparking in an IT closet in the library. Luckily, there was a smoke detector in that closet that tripped and set off the alarm. Despite what people say about modern Simplex, I don’t remember that system ever being in trouble and it never had any false alarms during my time there other than a student pulling the fire alarm after school one time.
This next story was at my current school which has a Simplex 4100u voice evac system that was original to the building. I was not here when this happened but was told by several people who saw it happen.
Apparently, there was volleyball practice after school in the gym. I guess some girls were trying to make microwave popcorn in the teacher’s lounge when the microwave started on fire. There were still some students in the cafeteria waiting for their buses as well. Everyone got evacuated and the fire department came to handle the situation.
This system never had any false alarms my first year there but my second year they started a cooking class and there are smoke detectors in a storage closet that always has the door open to that room as well as directly outside that room so false alarms are now pretty frequent.