Fire Alarms at your Workplace

[HelloHockeyFans]

I'm sure a number of you have gone through this before... you're working and the alarm goes off... except it's not your "standard" alarm (think a loud, annoying bell), but it's a series of boring, unscary tones.

We just had one here and everyone just sort of looked at each other for about 5 minutes before some decided to stay, while others decided to leave.

What's with these new alarms? Apparently, there are also numerous different tones which are used to distinguish a real alarm from a test alarm that are differentiated only by duration between successive tones...

And since I'm on this topic, how many of you condo dwellers stay in your suite when the fire alarm goes off in your building? We even have "alarm silencers" in our suites to disable the alarm from sounding, after we hear it. I know I've never gone downstairs at 3AM at the sound of the alarm.

[Agamemnon]

Slow tones often mean 'potential pending emergency', and then faster tones mean 'get the hell out of the building!'... a lot of them use the frequency of alarm to indicate the level of 'emergency' occurring.

When I worked in the malls there used to be fire alarms almost every day, but as long as its the 'slow frequency' one you don't have to do anything but 'be aware'.

[Teal]

I work from home.....

[BlackArcher101]

When I lived in the rez at SAIT, it had a new fire alarm system... which by the way was "tested" nearly every fri/sat night.

It would go in stages, the first alarm a light 'binging' sound and sometimes a voice would then say the alarm is being investigated. You didn't have to leave at that point. If there was a problem, it would then escalate to a louder alarm and you would have to leave.

I wish it went to the first stage if the alarm was pulled as this usually happened at 2am. Not fun when it skips right to the "get the hell out now" stage.


At my workplace however, our fire alarm is a handheld air horn. No looking at coworkers asking what the hell that sound was, because you are already out of your chair before that air in the can runs out.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

As a former roving consultant, I've worked in many of the towers downtown. Universally, fire alarms get ignored most of the time by people unless there's a growly firewarden who kicks your arse down the stairwell. Reason for this is simple, too many false alarms.

Worst evac ever was from Banker Hall 39. Quads burned for 2 days after that. Stairwells were stupid hot and humid with the crush of people, and many times you would just stand there not moving at all. Worst of all it was a drill - I could see some of the older people there going into cardiac arrest for that drill.... Not saying that drill's aren't useful, but the risks have to be worth it. Bankers had to be the worst building for false alarms too, perhaps due to all the retail space in it?

Only once in 10 years have I been in an office tower where the alarm was legit - place got hit by lightning and blew out a transformer. Smoky parkade.

My old condo was a haven for alarms for a period when the crackhead got a hold of one of our fobs and would smoke up in the stairwell. The silence button would kill the alarm buzzer in your unit, but not the strobe light or horn in the hallway so really it didn't do much. Not like you could sleep under those circumstance - tried to ignore them but couldn't.


Ignoring alarms is of course, bad, but unfortunately one tends to be conditioned by so many false alarms...

[Robbob]

It's amazing how slow people react to bells now days. I remember when Southcentre had one of their transformers blow and the alarm went off security had to go store to strore to tell people to evacuate. Unless there is smoke or fire I don't think people really take them seriously unless someone tells them it is an issue.