Fire Alarm

For a few months now I've been working in a Hospital, IT dept.... They are constantly testing the fire alarm system.... Every day you can put money on it that the fire alarm goes off. Its not a constant noise though which indicates a test...

I was in the shop thats within the hospital today and the fire alarm went off. The staff in the shop immediately said "we have to close the shop and evacuate".

I was a bit alarmed by this as it was what I thought was a test alarm.

So anyway... I had just been served and walked down towards my IT dept which is a 2 minute walk down the main corridor..... While I was walking down the corridor there was a woman closing all the doors, obviously fire doors which prevent the fire from spreading.
Walked into the IT dept and it was all calm. The alarm was still going off.

So one part of the hospital is going crazy because of a fire alarm.... and all the office staff are taking it easy... finishing off their pot noodles and drinking coffee.

Scary stuff I tell ya!!!

There is such a thing as too much testing, which leads to complacency. There should be an agreed time when the alarm is tested every week, so that any other alarms are treated as real.

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Originally Posted by TeePee

There is such a thing as too much testing, which leads to complacency. There should be an agreed time when the alarm is tested every week, so that any other alarms are treated as real.

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Yup, every Monday where I work. Luckily, I only work weekends :D

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Originally Posted by TeePee

There is such a thing as too much testing, which leads to complacency. There should be an agreed time when the alarm is tested every week, so that any other alarms are treated as real.

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That is exactly what I thought.... but it happens every day..

If there was a real alarm.... I would more than likely ignore it and treat it as another test....

We had a powercut a few weeks back... and it took 7 minutes for the generators to kick in... Which is a silly time considering this is a hospital... 7 minutes are far too long. So we have some new generators which reduce this time.
We had a trial run the other week and everyone was communicating via walkie talkies.... Apparently when the power first went off, the fire officer asked over the walkie talkies when can they test the fire alarm! To which a few of the lads told him to shut up about his stupid fire alarm!!!

Funny enough... while writing this post... the fire alarm has just gone off again! :heckle:

Its bloody stupid!

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Originally Posted by Kez

Yup, every Monday where I work.

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I remember being at college and them testing the firealarm every monday at 10.30.

Considering I started lesons at 10 it was an unwanted wakeup call for all the tired/hungeover amoungst us :mad:

We have a fire alarm test every Monday morning at 10:00, but it only lasts 5 seconds. To have one every day like that is ridiculous. If the alarm lasts longer then about 5 seconds, we are normally walking for the doors straight away.

I'm a fire marshall too, which means I'm the last one out of our office so I don't let any of them hang about! :D

yeah same here I was made a fire marshal and the funniest thing is, I have been here almost a year and there hasn't be a drill at all lol.

I work on a chemical research site, we have two types of alarm. Stay put or get out. We have around 250,000 litres of mainly highly flammable materials on site, so when the evac alarm goes, we go. To reinforce this they whow a video of a site similar to ours going up in flames, it included a tanker going bang, very scarry. Makes you laugh when the evac points are only 100m from the main storage areas, if there was a fire buggered if I would stop there :)

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Originally Posted by Atomic

I remember being at college and them testing the firealarm every monday at 10.30.

Considering I started lesons at 10 it was an unwanted wakeup call for all the tired/hungeover amoungst us :mad:

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Same thing happens here. Monday Morning 10 o'clock sharp the alarm is tested. Its almost as if they are taunting you. "Hahahahahahahha its monday, you're back to work!!!" Almost like a nightmare alarm clock.

Can't remember the last time the Fire alarm went off at school/sixth form. Probably doesn't even work. When I was in year 10 the actual fire alarm control panel caught fire http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tony.canning/rofl.gif :lol: The bell system's never worked properly since

I remember at school they used to do it maybe once a year on the coldest day ever, and make you stand outside for hours.

at school we had a fire alarm set off at 10.15am every wednesday morning whilst we were in maths.... quite cunning really

In uni the alarms in the buildings are all tested at 8.55am every thursday morning just before lectures start. In my 1st year i remember having to evacuate biology quite regularly and having to stand UNDERNEITH the building that the fire alarm was going off in! now THAT is planning!

I used to work in a shopping centre and cunningly to test the fire alarm they played music over the circuits instead of the siren and "Evacuate calmly looting on your way out". The downside was that the only music they could play legally was.......Christmas music which spoilt the cunningness of it

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Originally Posted by Howard

When I was in year 10 the actual fire alarm control panel caught fire http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tony.canning/rofl.gif :lol:

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Well that's rather ironic, hehe.

Where I currently work, the fire alarm involves me shouting fire, so we dont have alarm tests :P

Our fire escape, if the stairs catch fire, involves jumping out the windows, onto the roof of the cars parked below. People always try to park at the other side of the building :E


When I was in school the alarm was tested about once a term, however it got set off about once a day...

Can you believe the fire alarm has been tested 3 times this morning...

I've only been at work 26 minutes!!!

If the fire brigade were to catch on to this they would remove the testicles of the fire officer!

Working at a university where some students live on campus, the damn alarm goes off far too frequently. I'd hate to be a member of our local fire brigade who get dragged out here so often

aye at uni if the alarm went off the local fire service had to attend, drill or no drill.

The fire service will stop coming if there are false alarms too often!

At Uni, my halls caught fire.

Seriously... half the kitchen went up, cupboards were burning, a cooker, etc. I put it out with an extinguisher and evacuated the floor. THEN the fire alarm went off...

The smoke detectors were so bad, they were only activated by the powder from the extinguisher, and the 'push glass' boxes were near to the entrances, not where I needed them to be, hence the faster manual evacuation.

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Originally Posted by TeePee

At Uni, my halls caught fire.

Seriously... half the kitchen went up, cupboards were burning, a cooker, etc. I put it out with an extinguisher and evacuated the floor. THEN the fire alarm went off...

The smoke detectors were so bad, they were only activated by the powder from the extinguisher, and the 'push glass' boxes were near to the entrances, not where I needed them to be, hence the faster manual evacuation.

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TeePee, singlehandedly, saves the day. You some sort of superhero?

Yes. I have a letter tattooed on my chest. Sadly I can only view it upside down or in a mirror back to front, but I think it's a W. Make of that what you will...

Actually having ruined the rest of my life, I think I'm allowed to hark back to one moment of glory. The freaky think was how like a superhero it felt. Everyone stood around just staring and not having a clue what to do, while I moved 'faster than a speeding bullet' by comparisson. I actually attribute the fact that I knew what to do to having been an army cadet and having done practise drills, which were taken seriously. Maybe there is a moral there too....

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Originally Posted by Big RICHARD

If the fire brigade were to catch on to this they would remove the testicles of the fire officer!

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I think this should be arranged. The fire officer's incompetence may well cost lives and they need to be removed from such a position of responsibility as quickly as possible. To become complacent with so many tests without announcements beforehand is completely normal and expected. Thus rendering the fire alarm utterly useless.
The other reason to get the fire brigade involved is that in all likelihood letting it go through the NHS management structure will doubtless result in this not being dealt with appropriately.

8 years on... :)

those so called fire alarm tests could also be a faulty system that needs investigating. have you ever seen the guys doing the testing if its only one it should be two as 1 releases the activation point (call point) the other should be silencing the panel at the other end and not leaving it sounding!

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Originally Posted by peterb

8 years on... :)

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How did that happen? Did I resurrect this thread or some spammer?

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Originally Posted by badass

How did that happen? Did I resurrect this thread or some spammer?

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It had been resurrected by a subsequently removed post!

As it is long past its sell-by date, I'll close it.