Regent College in Leicester is said to be the first establishment in the education sector to install Refuge Alerter, a product designed by Deaf Alerter. The college carried out a fire safety audit to ensure that it was up to date with health and safety requirements. This identified that some form of communication was required between the refuge areas and a central location in the event of an emergency evacuation.
Following the success of the Deaf Alerter fire alarm and messaging system, the company developed a product that would offer an alternative to hard wired refuge communication systems using radio based technology.
The Ofcom licensed RA1000 system provides wireless communication between the refuge outstations, fixed base station and a portable refuge communicator. Traditional refuge communication systems require the base station to be continually manned during an emergency. In many buildings, this would be inconvenient or impossible as this person might need to be actively engaged in controlling the incident away from their desk. The portable refuge communicator overcomes this restriction.
As part of continued improvements, the college simulated an evacuation exercise involving Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service. The communication system was used as part of the exercise, to establish which refuge areas were in use. This also gave the people within the safe refuge area the reassurance that help was on the way from a member of the college’s fire evacuation team.
