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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