While emergency evacuation drills are good practice in fire safety and a key part of staff training, false alarms can simply be a waste of everyone’s time. Not least for the emergency services, who may be called out for no reason if your alarm system is automated. We should all do what we can to ensure that the Fire Services are free to deal with real emergencies.
If false alarms occur frequently, they can have a real and disruptive effect on your business and productivity. The other negative impact can be that if you have too many false alarms, the Fire Services will not respond without a specific manual request. That is not good news if you ever have a real fire.
A false alarm can be a symptom of a fault on your system, so they should never be ignored. If you can’t find the cause of an alarm activation, it is always best to call in an engineer to investigate the problem. The last thing you need is for the same thing to happen a day or two later because of same small fault. Even worse, it could be a signal that an element of the alarm is not properly functioning, which could have a serious impact in the event of a real fire, allowing the fire to spread much more than it otherwise might.
Many false alarms are caused by people in the building not being aware that a fire alarm system is in place, or at least not understanding the types of thing that can activate the fire alarm. You can deal with these through a few simple procedures:
Ensure staff and visitors know that your building is protected by an automatic fire alarm system
- Make this information part of your induction training and fire safety training for all staff.
- Have prominent notices up at all main entrances to your workplace. Use the following wording:“These premises are protected by an automatic fire alarm system. Please obtain permission from the site manager before undertaking any work involving flame, smoke, heat or sparks.”
Ensure that no-one carries out any ‘hot works’ without permission from the Health and Safety Representative, fire
- Staff need to know that any work involving flame, smoke, heat or sparks must have special permission.
- Build this into staff training and ensure it is included in staff manuals, operating plans, etc.
- Have a Hot Works Permit system or similar mechanism to ensure that contractors working on site follow your safe working procedures.
- Build this requirement into contracts with any contractors who will undertake work on the premises.
Ensure that no work involving the generation of dust or the use of spray paint is done in an area with smoke detectors in, unless the detectors are properly protected.
- Make sure that someone has specific personal responsibility for dealing with this and similar matters.
- If possible, smoke detectors can be replaced with heat detectors, but only by a qualified engineer.
- The alternative to swapping to heat detectors is to cover and protect the smoke detectors during the period of work (with paper, plastic, etc).
- This should not be done lightly, as covered smoke detectors will clearly not work correctly, if at all, in the event of a real fire.
- The situation should be risk assessed, and alternative means of detection put in place (such as a person in the area with specific fire-watching brief during the period of works).
- Make sure that someone has the specific personal responsibility for removing the covering from the detectors when the work is finished. It is vital that this is done promptly so that the alarm system is fully functional straight away.
- Ensure that the fire alarm system is tested once the work is completed, to ensure that it is functioning correctly.
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Following these simple guidelines should eliminate the vast majority of your false alarms and save you and the fire service a lot of unnecessary work.
For more detailed guidance on Fire Risk Assessment and many other health and safety issues please visit Fire-RiskAssessment.com
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