False fire alarms cost the UK economy an estimated GB pound 1 billion (US$1.3 billion) a year, and have become a significant problem. In 2011/12, fire and rescue services responded to around 312,000 false alarms.
These false alarms pull huge amounts of manpower, and the cost to a company (because of an unnecessary staff evacuation) can run into the tens of thousands of pounds.
Generally, the problem of false alarms is not caused by faulty equipment, although this is often recorded as the cause by responding fire services. The problem is usually to do with alarm system mismanagement — from the age-old problem of burnt toast, to a build-up of dust, or failed testing and maintenance.
In fact, in a recent fire alarm at this office, the FIREX team noted a very sheepish looking alarm engineer hanging around on the phone to someone as he stood back from an alarm control panel.
Practical solutions
The FIA has released this infographic as a tool for people to use when explaining some of the key problems of false fire alarms, the scale of the problem, and some of the solutions.
Among these are some fairly common-sense based solutions including making sure that detectors are located in sensible places — i.e., not over a toaster or next to a shower — and checking that manual call points are not in a position where they could be accidentally activated.
People are also advised to ensure that their fire system is regularly maintained and serviced by a third party certificated company. This may sound obvious, but it is an important reminder to many businesses that are not carrying out such maintenance as a matter of course.
The FIA also shares some advice on control panel filtering, which can be set up to disable certain parts of the system at certain times of the day, or to set up delays which would allow fire wardens to check an area before an evacuation is begun and the fire service is called. But such filtering processes come with a warning that they should only be set up following a full risk assessment, and with consultation from a fire alarm expert.
The infographic above is part of the FIA’s wider Cut False Alarm Costs campaign.
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That 10% of systems cause 80% of false alarms sounds like some good actionable data. Is there any specific training programme directed at that 10%? The infographic is a good start, but something which targets those systems causing the most call outs in a robust fashion would be good to see.
Aside from the systems, there’s also the human factor to consider. People make mistakes, some make them a lot, and so I think it’s worthwhile to educate people on how to go about these situations, in terms of identifying and assessing the situation. Workshops and seminars would be a good start.
Right! So assuming they can pin point that troublesome 10%, the workshops and seminars can be directly aims at just that troublesome group.
Would it be within the Fire Services remit to arrange such targeted training?
Its always irritated me when these statistics paint all with the same brush. The simple fact is the majority of the Fire industry work hard on False Alarm Management the Fire Brigades are first to admit this, if they used the resources to compile and complain about these statistics on educating or punishing the top 10% offenders in there respective areas we actually might get somewhere. But now plans are afoot to charge for attendance instead, mmm, are funds being cut, cynical…? maybe.
I’ve said before (and will again…now) that we often hear that hospitals are among the top offenders for false alarms. It feels like the fire service charging the NHS is just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Rather than threatening to fine the worst offenders (as many fire services are) they should be sending education and resources direct to anyone they’ve been called to more than, say twice, in 12 months. It wouldn’t take much of a big data approach, as they already seem to know who the worst offenders are…
Interesting comments about the 10%… we covered false alarms and the management of them as part of the FIA’s Fire Safety Seminars that we have run for five years.
The trouble is that it’s the good people who attend the seminars!
Off topic briefly – ‘The 10/80 Rule’ would make a great band name.
I agree with Rob. Instead of doling out punishments, I think it would be beneficial to take a positive approach to this. Education and seminars is a good start.
@Robert Brown, thanks for the post. I think end users should be made aware about the causes for the false alarms. If the end users know the possibile causes for false alarms then it will definitely help reduce the number of false alarm calls.
I agree with Rob. Instead of doling out punishments, I think it would be beneficial to take a positive approach to this. Education and seminars is a good start.
@Hazel Chua, good point. Doling out punishment might discourage people from making alarm calls. We can use different communication channels like social media to educate end users.
@ Rob
That sounds like a reasonable approach. If one location has that many false alarms it makes sense they would be a good candidate for assistance whether it be education or help in repairing a below par system.
@ JonathonL
This is a very good point. If the community is awareof the number and cost of false alarms, and they are informed of what is believed to be the cause, they can then be educated to prevent them.