Brigantes in York on fire (22/02)

A member of my family is a long-standing building surveyor and recommends the staircase, but concrete ones are allegedly best, even if wood does make a decent building material if used correctly.

Any structural areas which make “portals” (for want of a better word) around doorways can also be good.

Last month at the factory I work at part time, the fire alarm went off, and as we were stood at the assembly point, some who came out said the area of the factory they work in doesn't have a fire alarm sounder and instead a fire warden from elsewhere where it can be heard comes and notifies them!

175mph said:

Last month at the factory I work at part time, the fire alarm went off, and as we were stood at the assembly point, some who came out said the area of the factory they work in doesn't have a fire alarm sounder and instead a fire warden from elsewhere where it can be heard comes and notifies them!

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I think we had a problem at where I work for a while where the alarm wasn’t very audible in some locations. We now have extra sounders!

xc170 said:

I was in a branch of McDonalds today, my kid was hungry and it was the closest place, sat down eating and the fire alarm sounded, I was quite shocked to see I was the only person to actually get up from my seat and head towards the door...

Same thing has happened in my local shopping centre, alarm sounded, people continued to shop, madness...

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Indeed. But in some ways it's hard to blame people when fire alarms go off so often for testing or false alarms. If the people responsible for fire alarms want people to react more appropriately when fire alarms go off, then I suspect the best way is to reduce the number of times that fire alarms go off inappropriately. (I realise that's not an easy thing to achieve when the risks of an alarm not going off when there is actually a fire are so high. It probably requires some research.)

John Webb said:

There was research carried out as far back as the 1980s that showed that the best method of getting people to move out was a short burst of warning signal followed by an appropriate voice announcement for the building concerned. This made clear the warning signal was because of an emergency, and not just an equipment alarm, faulty alarm or burglar alarm which people might decide to ignore!

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This is extremely sensible. One of my biggest beefs about fire alarms is that they are so loud and unpleasant that they must surely interfere with rational thought. When an alarm goes off, you really want people to be thinking 'OK there might be a fire, what's the best way to get out of here safely / is there anyone nearby who might need assistance to get out / And if I can actually see the fire: Is it small enough, and do I have adequate training and can I see an obvious means to put it out very quickly'. But I know for my part, with most alarms, the overwhelming sensation is 'Help! Get that unbearable noise that's hurting my ears off! With little room left in my brain at that moment for any kind of logical thinking'. To my mind that represents atrocious design of the alarms, and I find it astonishing that we continue to build alarms in that way. A short burst of sound followed by an automated voice announcement would be easily achievable, and I'm fairly sure I would find it far more effective.

DynamicSpirit said:

Indeed. But in some ways it's hard to blame people when fire alarms go off so often for testing or false alarms. If the people responsible for fire alarms want people to react more appropriately when fire alarms go off, then I suspect the best way is to reduce the number of times that fire alarms go off inappropriately. (I realise that's not an easy thing to achieve when the risks of an alarm not going off when there is actually a fire are so high. It probably requires some research.)

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Modern detection systems using digital techniques so that a fire detector actually tells the control equipment what it is seeing in terms of temperature/smoke particles etc., rather saying "No Fire" or "Fire!", have considerably improved the performance of fire alarm systems to reduce false alarms (these days referred to as "Unwanted fire signals"). Fire and Rescue Services also have procedures in place to encourage owners of misbehaving systems to do something about such systems.

DynamicSpirit said:

This is extremely sensible. One of my biggest beefs about fire alarms is that they are so loud and unpleasant that they must surely interfere with rational thought. When an alarm goes off, you really want people to be thinking 'OK there might be a fire, what's the best way to get out of here safely / is there anyone nearby who might need assistance to get out / And if I can actually see the fire: Is it small enough, and do I have adequate training and can I see an obvious means to put it out very quickly'. But I know for my part, with most alarms, the overwhelming sensation is 'Help! Get that unbearable noise that's hurting my ears off! With little room left in my brain at that moment for any kind of logical thinking'. To my mind that represents atrocious design of the alarms, and I find it astonishing that we continue to build alarms in that way. A short burst of sound followed by an automated voice announcement would be easily achievable, and I'm fairly sure I would find it far more effective.

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The development of electronics over the last three decades now means that instead of having expensive central control equipment with tapes or CDs providing voice announcements, it is now possible to buy off the shelf sounders in which you can record digitally an announcement (or indeed several announcements) appropriate to the area in which the sounder is to be installed.
Regarding very loud sounders, the BS5839 on alarm systems requires certain minimum sound levels - these may need a loud signal in the adjacent corridor to ensure the required sound level is reached in adjacent rooms.