Fire Safety

Mar 1, 1999 12:00 PM, CINDY EMBRETSON

           

Picture this. Somewhere in a building, fire alarm horns are sounding again. No one knows the location of the fire. It could be in the cafeteria down the hall, in the storage area on the third floor or even in a second building on the site. People are paying little or no attention, or they are standing around wondering what to do next. They think it's probably a false alarm.Maybe this time it's a real fire. But security personnel have no way of knowing and no information for the firefighters who are on the way. If they did, they could save time, money and possibly lives.Sound unlikely? Maybe not. According to the National Fire Protection Association's (NFPA) 1997 National Fire Escape Survey, human behavior in a potential fire situation includes disbelief and procrastination. The image of a fire alarm creating widespread panic and immediate action is an illusion. The NFPA studied human reaction times to a fire alarm and found fewer than half of a building's occupants (45 percent) reacted immediately. Forty-three percent awaited instructions, and most troubling, 10 percent stayed behind to fight the fire.Nuisance alarms are a problem. They diminish the credibility of real fire alarm situations by confusing building occupants and numbing them to the sound of a horn or a bell. And false alarms are a costly contributor to lost productivity each year for companies and fire departments. In 1997, U.S. fire departments responded to 1.8 million false alarms. In the past 10 years, 21 firefighters have died while responding to false alarms, according to the NFPA study. As fire alarm systems age and deteriorate, the potential for nuisance alarms increases.New technology can provide the answer. Next-generation fire alarm systems with intelligent detector-level decision making, multi-element sensing devices and advanced audio evacuation messaging are now offering building managers the opportunity to virtually eliminate nuisance alarms and safeguard against lost productivity, downtime and ineffective fire emergency procedures.Today's building managers need to understand the benefits of system developments in order to plan for the future and determine the most efficient and cost-effective method of migrating from conventional fire alarm systems when the time is right.

Knowing when the time is rightThe first step in the process is recognizing the need for upgrading or retrofitting the current system by identifying the early warning signs of inadequacy. Here are some signs to look for:- Has the number of nuisance, or false, alarms increased in the past 18 months?- Are replacement parts becoming increasingly expensive or difficult to find?

- Is the building now being used in a different way than when the system was first installed? For example, is there a larger number of employees or more expensive equipment on the premises?- Are there no provisions for hearing-impaired occupants?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, it is time to start seriously thinking about an upgrade.A common, and unfortunate, response is to put off fire alarm system upgrades. More often than not, a fire alarm system is low on the list of budget priorities and treated as an insurance policy, where only the most basic coverage is provided to satisfy code requirements. But in manufacturing plants, for instance, periods of production downtime from real fires or false alarms can cost companies their reputations, as well as millions of dollars. Fire alarm systems are critical due to strict fire code requirements and the risk of legal action against building management negligence.Complying with fire alarm code requirements is a fundamental consideration when migrating to a new system. New or revised code requirements typically are not retroactive unless a substantial renovation to the building is under way. But jurisdictions are beginning to impose retroactive standards. Building managers must protect against liability by knowing the small print of local fire code and assessing the capabilities of their systems against those requirements.Similarly, specific legislation can affect standards and should be monitored closely. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), for example, specifies a minimum mounting height for manual pull stations to accommodate wheelchair users, and it imposes performance and application requirements for strobe lighting that notifies hearing-impaired building occupants of a fire.

What to look for in a new systemSystem flexibility is a key issue when considering migrating to newer technology. The new system should be able to support both conventional and intelligent detection devices and control panels, allowing the new devices to be installed gradually as budgets and work schedules allow. Also, systems that are capable of reusing existing zone wiring will allow the building manger to upgrade with minimal disruption to the building mission, while reducing installation costs.In conventional fire alarm systems, buildings are often sub-divided into zones, each with a set of detectors, manual pull stations and audible devices. When an alarm comes into the panel, you may know that it's on the third floor, but not which one of the 30 smoke detectors or eight manual pull stations set it off. With intelligent systems, every device features its own microprocessor, allowing the building manager to pinpoint the alarm location. Detectors are also available that combine photoelectric, ionization and thermal sensors into one unit to analyze and diagnose different fire signature types, providing optimum protection from fire and nuisance alarms.Because the microprocessor is also able to sample the environment more frequently, detection is rapid and accurate. Each microprocessor stores historical data such as the number of alarms, the nature of the trouble and the time and date of last maintenance. The detectors also notify building managers when cleaning and maintenance are required.Audio messaging allows geographic-specific audio instructions to be issued to building occupants on different floors, in the elevator or in the building entranceway in the event of a fire. In this way, building evacuation can be effectively controlled, enabling those most at risk to exit first, reassuring people captured in elevators of the reason for descending to a lower floor and preventing more people from entering the building. Emergency paging override is available to allow firemen to issue instructions. Messaging can be changed or updated with a laptop computer and a microphone.Such a system is suited to large, individual buildings like hospitals, office towers and hotels, as well as multi-building operations such as schools, universities and manufacturing facilities.

Cincinnati Public SchoolsThe Cincinnati Public Schools Board is a multi-site organization migrating its conventional zoned fire alarm systems to newer technology. The 80 school locations replaced many outdated, difficult-to-maintain alarm systems with one sophisticated network.What are the benefits of retrofitting all the schools? Reliability, audibility and above all safety of the kids, says Bill Moehring of Cincinnati Public Schools.The substantial cost savings of such a network was an obvious factor in the decision to retrofit the schools. A handful of the sites were still using the original wind-up mechanisms from the days when the buildings were first constructed, while others had conventional zoned systems. A number of the schools were even amplifying the audio signal through school PAs, causing code-compliance problems. None of the sites had proprietary supervision from an outside controller, and each school also leased an individual phone line for transmitting signals at a cost of about $1,000 a line. Working with Honeywell consultants, the school decided to migrate gradually to a new technology, and the sites most in need - the high schools - were tackled first. Honeywell's Excel Life Safety 1000 System supports both conventional and intelligent devices and panels, and because much of the wiring was already in place, installers used a mixture of new and existing panels. The new panels will work alongside the standard panels until budget dollars become available for a total upgrade. "With the system, we can immediately tell which school, which fire alarm and which location needs attention fast," says Moehring.With the flexibility to extend from a single panel to a set of 64 linked to a LAN network within each building, the project was able to move along as budgets and schedules allowed. By late 1999, each of the Cincinnati Public Schools will operate on the new system.The Cincinnati Public Schools contract is among the first fire alarm retrofits in the United States to take advantage of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), which is now being installed nationwide by the major telephone companies."ATM is the future of data transfer. It is fast, efficient and cheaper than frame relay, and it can provide customers with rapid-delivery and prioritized alarm signal messaging," says Greg Turner of Honeywell.At present, ATM is only available in 20 cities, but it is spreading fast. Using phone lines for fire alarm-signal transmission, of course, has been around for a long time, but ATM represents a faster, more efficient and less expensive method of using dedicated public carrier transmission. Capable of transmitting the entire contents of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in a split second, ATM is ideal for fire alarm data transfer. It guarantees message delivery within a specific time frame, has redundancy, and helps fire alarm systems meet code requirements. ATM incurs only a fraction of the cost of traditional leased lines. It avoids the costs and logistical problems that occur when leased lines cross telephone company boundaries. Customers pay only for a data drop from their building to the nearest phone company facility.The future of fire alarm management looks to be centered on even greater detection sophistication, improved networking and more advanced digital signal processing. Systems will become increasingly networked and integrated, including the provision of on-screen access to all building controls at one PC station. Thanks to these technological advances, old style fire alarms are becoming a thing of the past. The smarter, better life safety systems taking their place rapidly identify the problem and effectively communicate with the people who hear an alarm sound - the fire department, building managers, and those wondering what to do next.

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