Email Enquiry

Subject:               Impact of False Alarms         

Date of Initial Email :   Sat 05/04/2008

Initial Email Detail:

Has any member of the group analyzed the impact of evacuations due to false alarms, particularly in industry with sophisticated processes, the  associated cost, lost time, and the impact on production?
Is there an acceptable number of false evacuations per year?  Are false evacuations seen as a test of systems and procedures?
Any help with this would be much appreciated

Second Email:

I recently came across this text in a publication of the "Safety Health Practitioner"

The actual number of acceptable false alarms depends on the size of the installation.
For example, an installation with 1000 detectors should not produce more than 16 false alarms over 12 months. However, for a smaller system with only 300 detectors, the permissible number falls to just five false alarms over the same period.

Third Email: (dated )

The evacuation exercises that we carry out on Hull site are planned  the shift fire officer will arrange with only a very limited number of personnel knowing that the exercise is going ahead. This is desinged to test the whole network of the local emergency procedures. In the event of a "False Alarm" evacuation of the building this will be entered into our records as a test but the planned exercise will still be carried out.