Fire Drills (Last Half of 2016-2017 school year)

Note: Rambling/Long Explanation ahead. Feel free to just skip to the video, which is below, if you wish to do so. :smiley:

I know these recordings were kind of disappointing, because almost all of the drills that were conducted were done in the same class period. In the months of January, April, and May, drills were all conducted during fifth period (the final class period of the school day). The only exception to this was February’s drill, which was conducted during second period. While this routine schedule might sound a bit odd (as my school has never had most of the drills in fifth period before), it seems that this was the only time the administration could set up a time with the fire department to come out to supervise the drill (at my school, the whole administration, including the principal, evacuate the building and run through a building wide attendance check with designated fire drill “leaders” (which are teachers or department heads responsible for the attendance of the entire department whereas the teachers only take attendance for their own class), while the fire department stays inside and probably does a quick sweep of the building to verify the alarms are working, and upon the principal’s approval after everyone has been accounted for, silence and reset the system). Anyways, my fifth period class is located right next to the main entrance because we’re in a small student support/intervention classroom at the front of the building inside the aux gym.

So, I’m sorry about the short recordings, but on the bright side, I got a quick 4-second clip of one of the alarms in said gym going off and the strobe flashing, as well as some new pictures of the alarms, mainly in the aux gym (first and third/fourth clips) It only flashes once in the clip very slowly because the A/V’s are set up as two wire, so strobes are being coded, which is technically okay because this is a pre-ADA system. Alarms in said gym are a 4903-9104 strobe plate with a 2901-9846 horn on it, and a Simplex 4903-9252 electronic horn/strobe (which was a retrofit after another one of the same combos as above died and needed to be replaced). Pulls in the auxiliary gym are interestingly enough, Honeywell/Ademco 5140MPS-2 hex key reset pulls on their respective pull station backboxes. Two out of the three in the gym (including the one pictured) are surface mounted, while the other is flush mounted. They have STI Stopper II Pull Station Covers (without horns) over all the pulls in this gym as well as in the main gym, as these covers are merely to prevent damage from flying objects in the gyms rather than to thwart false alarms.

Obviously, these pulls were retrofits installed to replace older pull stations (probably by the same company that installed the Wheelock Exceders on Simplex retrofit plates), which were either Simplex Local Alarm Chevrons or 42521-20’s because this section of the old building was added on or built in 1958 as the original main gym. I’d assume it was affected by the system upgrades in the early 80’s and early 90’s, so I have no idea what the original pulls were, so that’s my guess.

There’s really no false fire alarms that ever occur other than the time that an actual, very small fire started in the kitchen and the system worked like it was supposed to (I don’t think there’s any heat detectors in there, nor any on the system at all, so I’m assuming one of the kitchen staff pulled the alarm). The fire was out before the FD arrived because it was extinguished using a fire extinguisher.

Anyways, I do apologize for the super long post with all the rambling and explanations, but I hope you enjoy the video!

Really cool videos that you have for the alarms there. They are pretty nice and remind me of my high school!