After what happened yesterday, my questions remain about traditional FA systems and our response to them.

After I heard about the latest atrocity that occurred within an educational facility yesterday that claimed 17 lives in a senseless act of violence, I couldn’t help but wonder why this hasn’t been talked about more.

We are all aware that in new construction, mass notification systems/EVAC are required by NFPA codes. They not only alert persons about fires, but other dangerous situations that occur in buildings. They have the capability to be overridden should a perpetrator activate an alarm in an attempt to do what was done yesterday: to cause confusion and lure out more victims and ultimately cause more fatalities.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. We’ve had this in our lockdown and active threat training for years, since the 1990’s: In an active shooter/lockdown situation, if the fire alarm sounds, do not heed the alarm’s warning… the perpetrator(s) motive may be to lure more victims out… to cause more harm and/or loss of life.

Therefore, I truly believe that something needs to be done. From some quick research, it appears the school had a traditional fire alarm system with horn/strobes. There was no way to differentiate any different sort of emergency, let alone to override the alarm or provide vital instructions that could’ve saved lives. There was hardly any time to do anything once students and faculty heard the shots but to act upon their own instincts. Plus, they have had this knowledge for years, and my question remains as to why many districts across the country neglect to put it in their lockdown protocols.

Being a student in a 75-year-old school building with a traditional fire alarm system myself, it scares me to think that one day heeding the fire alarm’s warning may cost me my life. And I wonder that had they had a mass notification system in that school in Florida, existing construction, that the alarm could’ve been overridden somehow, that more people could’ve been saved and not caught in the ensuing chaos.

Thoughts? I know this is a serious topic, but as it has connections to me and my school (going to school in a 75-year-old building), I thought it was worth bringing up. Because in my opinion people’s lives could’ve been saved, perhaps not much, but some. And I believe that. And I wonder that perhaps I should change my philosophy about being the first person out in a fire alarm, because I wonder what would happen to me in that sort of situation. While I hope that nothing like this ever occurs to anybody, it is the reality we are facing and one I am facing myself, being a high school student myself and I thought it was important to bring up the question: Should we invest more money in school facilities upgrading existing and installing extensive mass notification systems in new construction to help save lives and prevent more loss of life in a situation like this, even though we hope it won’t happen to us, but unfortunately is today’s reality?

And more importantly, the next time a traditional fire alarm system sounds, should we heed the warning as we have done traditionally? Or should we change our approach?

I think to a certain extent you are very correct. But realistically how would districts in poorer areas be able to afford such a system? I’m not trying to knock voice systems, I think they’re amazing but quite cost prohibitive. To install a new system and pull wiring it may be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I go to a school that is partial voice evac (just main gyms and commons but controlled by the same FACP) and realistically I don’t worry that much considering they use the PA system for giving lockdown notifications and such.

However the PA lines are not supervised and not all the speakers work so if there was an emergency someone could just cut the lines and bam, no more PA system.

I was thinking the same thing too when I read an article claiming that the fire alarm system was used to lure out the victims. However, I do find it important to note that only three out of the 17 people were killed outside with more injuries possible (Shooting suspect ‘always seemed like the unstable type,’ ex-classmate says).

I think we need to heed the warnings of a fire alarm system as usual. Fires can become a pretty serious situation if no one deals with them correctly. After all, every minute once the alarm sounds will count to whether people will survive or not.
That being said, false alarms often end up to be a waste of time and can cause a large amount of confusion. According to an NFPA Report back in 2009, there were approximately 2 million false fire alarm activations that local fire brigades have responded to. One of these this year has contributed to the unfortunate fatalities of the victims. I believe that this shooting would be considered under the Malicious activity.

I believe that schools and buildings should drop the traditional horn-strobe system and start using more voice-evacuation systems. It doesn’t make sense to me that voice evacuation systems are only used in a “Place of Assembly”. In fact, I would consider a high school with a population of about 3000 people (which is close to the population of what my high school is) to be a place of assembly for students. The NFPA needs to redefine the definition of a place of assembly, especially because it does not include schools with very large populations of students and other persons in the building.

It would also be practical to start using a two-stage system along with the voice evacuation. As I mentioned, there are many instances where false alarms are an issue. It has been proven that false alarms were reduced with these types of system. This together could have reduced the confusion and chaos that occured in the recent shooting and any future warnings that occur.

Or what about, depending on the system already used, add a lockdown alarm. Fire-Lite panels (which I have most of my experience with) have zone/module settings for a hazard alarm, medical alarm, and user-defined alarms. If the panel supports it (pretty sure firelite doesn’t unfortunately) you could code the horn NACs differently for a lockdown alarm. If it’s a speaker system (Wheelock SPMNS for example) then it would be pretty easy to have a lockdown alarm trigger the entire speaker strobe system to go into alarm.

Something worth mentioning is that in many cases it is actually the victims/bystanders who activate the fire alarm to alert others of the active shooter, such as in the Century 16 movie theater shooting.

I think a two-stage arrangement for the pull stations (not smoke detectors or waterflow switch) in schools would be a good idea, both for preventing traditional false alarms and for situations like this.

You could have a second set of NAs with the horns set to continuous and strobes of a different color for the lockdown alarm. Not sure if that would be much cheaper than voice evac though. Also there’s the problem of all the schools that still use continuous for fire.

My issue with specially coded alarms, specifically regular horn-strobes being coded in something other than T3), is that the chance is likely that people will not respond appropriately in another emergency situation that does not involve a fire. Unless there is a nationally or internationally unified code on what sounds and patterns are to play for each emergency and the public is formally educated on what those are, I would say that there is a high risk that people are going to be confused and unsure of what to do.

It reminds me of an experiment I did - I tested if people understood ISO Standard Symbols (i.e. the famous “Running Man Sign”, etc.) compared to the English Signs that much of the US is using. I found that there was more consistency with using actual words than symbols in regards to what they thought they meant since there was a detailed description that could be understood by those who spoke English.

I think we could apply this to voice evacuation systems since it helps to communicate what’s going on to a variety of people in a very efficient manner, thus, occupants respond accordingly. This is especially to those who aren’t familiar with the certain sounds or patterns normally used.

Even if we switch it all over to voice evac in schools, I don’t think it would make a difference here because the perpetrator still pulled the alarm and people ended up evacuating anyway and the perpetrator shot them one by one as they were leaving and the message would be the fire warning message.

Even with voice evac, it would still take as much time to get to the panel to change the message if the alarm was pulled as it would to get to a PA system to announce to students to stay in their classrooms because there was an active shooter. Lives would still be lost either way but whether or not there would be more lives lost depends on the gun that was used.

The only way to prevent guns from going into schools is if there are metal detectors installed that go off and set off a warning to students that someone is in the building with a metal object that could be a gun.

What about two-stage systems? I feel like I’ve never seen a two-stage system in the wild before. If a pull station is pulled it would tell people to stay put and stay alert for signs of fire, then if someone puts in their key it would tell people to evac.

That would require quickly getting to a pull station but if there is one in the main office that the school resource officer can get to, that could actually work.

Older schools have paging systems, they were able to go into a lock down at the school regardless of the “traditional fire alarm”. No real need for a second system to do the same thing.

Yes, but the issue is that a) the circuits aren’t supervised, so if you lose a speaker/wire gets cut then you don’t know about it; b) PA systems tend to be neglected compared to fire alarm speakers since PA systems don’t need to get inspected annually; and c) currently none of these solutions solve the problem of someone pulling the alarm/setting off a detector to lure people out in order to kill more people.

Paging systems don’t need to be supervised or inspected, they’re used every day so people will know if they are working or not. Technically they’re tested multiple times a day… so no worries there. There’s also plenty of other mass notification options available like computer desktop alerts, text messages, etc.

It’s in modern codes to have voice evac in all schools, it’s also in the latest codes that you don’t need pull stations if it’s a fully sprinkled building with voice evac, so all of these problems have always been addressed going forward. All older buildings will always be grandfathered in.

The real question is how he was able to get into the building to pull the fire alarm in the first place. Schools should have all exterior exits locked while school is in session, that’s just basic security and has been recommended since columbine…

I know that after Virginia Tech and the shootings there, my high school put door alarms on almost ALL of the doorways to make sure that people couldn’t get in and made sure they were all armed so that should be one option considered.

Not to get political, but instead installing metal detectors (something that could make morale even worse), or any of this other fancy security stuff, let’s treat the root of the problem. It would be more efficient just to be more proactive in helping those with psychological issues sort them out. Many times (this case included), it’s painfully obvious they would be the first person to go on a killing spree. Nobody was surprised when this guy did it.

Unlike fires or tornadoes, these incidents are neither accidents nor forces of nature, and are statistically rare. Not to say we shouldn’t do anything about them, but this is the wrong thing.

The media gives free publicity to these people, which in turn encourages the next person to do it. They have no incentive to stop because each time there’s a shooting, they get another big free story as well. Let’s do something about that. If you looked at CNN’s front page after the shooting, they were clearly enjoying it a little. When we end up in a frenzy over stuff like this, they win, and the shooter wins.

And opportunists come along and offer to take some of your liberties, whether by installing metal detectors, hiring armed guards, clamping down on privacy, or banning guns.

The problem is that even in the case where it is obvious somebody needs help, they don’t get it or worse when they do go ahead and pull stunts like this, they show no signs of needing help so that might not always work either.

The idea of having voice evacuation may be ideal, but as someone stated… the message broadcasted would state that there is an emergency in the building and to evacuate. I know with some systems, it is easy to silence the alarm if it is a shooter situation and replace it with a lockdown message. But the reality, its not always feasible to do so. The panel may be in a different part of the building than the administration/office, it may be a little harder to change the message, etc. It would be so much easier to get on the PA and announce “Lockdown” as most schools do.

As for the fire alarm going off-- I thought that the fire alarm was pulled before the shooting began. Which means that it was in a very easy place to get a hold of (maybe outside of a building?).

Someone posted that we should heed the fire alarm, even in a lockdown situation. I took place in an active shooter training last summer for my district. The fire alarm did ring because of the amount of gun smoke in the air. All of us in the room thought it was pulled to be a ploy to get us out of the room. We did not evacuate. In the debriefing afterward, we were told that disregarding the alarm was the right thing to do. In lockdown, you never know why the alarm might ring. It could be a malfunction, smoke from the guns or even an actual fire. We were told by the sheriff’s department that if it were real, we would either be rescued by first responders on scene, school administration or if we were truly in eminent danger from fire, then we could evacuate ourselves. Our students have been trained that once a lockdown begins that we are to remain in lockdown until either the special all-clear announcement is made or someone with a key lets us out of the building as only certain people would have the master key (and yes, maybe not always feasible either).

That is how it was in my high school also (we only had one lockdown when I was in elementary school…in 4th grade which was 2001-2002 because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and I ended up getting dismissed DURING it because I had a doctors appointment and we did have a bomb threat when I was in 7th grade which was 2004-2005 but they just told us to evacuate and didn’t set off the alarms) when we started doing them…when I was in 10th grade in 2007-2008. When the alarms went off, we just stayed in the room. I actually got lucky because the shop I was in had no horn but others did. I don’t know how anybody could sit through the blaring of a 9838 horn in continuous for 10 minutes. Or worse a 2DCD. Or a 9219.

Do you think a BluePoint Alert Solutions police alarm system would solve the problem?

Those systems are nice and all, but it doesn’t solve the issue of somebody pulling the alarm/setting it off purposefully to lure people outside.

Also, BluePoint in particular is very expensive. I think I saw a news story on a high school somewhere that installed one and the total cost was well over $50,000. You basically have to install a second fire alarm system without smoke detectors - rip up walls to pull new wire, same for the ceiling for the speakers, and the panel I’m assuming is very pricey. On top of all that you have to pay the monitoring fee. Again I’m not trying to be mean and diss on the system because I think it’s really great, it’s just a manner if you have the money to put one in.

with mass notification systems you can just use the fire alarm to accomplish the same thing, we’ve done systems before with lockdown pulls.

this was just a case of something that would have been largely prevented if they would’ve been following common practices that were put in place all the way back after columbine happened.