School fire alarm test 2 (2 videos)

[OmniAlert]

Might want to turn down your volume.

Didn't know it was the front facing camera... This video was taken about 1 week ago.

http://s1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee4 ... fef2b5.mp4

This video was taken the first week of school.
http://s1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee4 ... fd61ec.mp4

Seems like my school is gonna test the fire alarms every month.

There is one fire alarm outside.

[SirenMadness]

That's exactly how my grade school tested (and still probably does) their alarms, except they had no schedule and tests were sporadic.

[OmniAlert]

That's exactly how my grade school tested (and still probably does) their alarms, except they had no schedule and tests were sporadic.

Yeah, my principal doesn't tell anyone when he's gonna test the alarms. Not even the teachers.

[Notre.Dame1003]

Sometimes they tell us, sometimes they don't. As a side note, we have had a fire every year. Granted, they are only small kitchen fires, but that still means we have to go outside and (sometimes) stand in 3 foot+ drifts.

[OmniAlert]

It takes about 1 minute and a half (maybe less) to evacuate the whole school. There are over 350 students.

And there has never been a fire at any of the schools I went to. Only a gas leak in grade 7. We had to go to the daycare beside our school because it was raining outside.

[Notre.Dame1003]

For us, it takes about 3-5 minutes. Our enrollment last year was 3643. For the real fires, we go to the middle school across the street.

[Model2]

Horn alarms in Ontario?

Everyone has bells around here. Out of the five schools I attended, all five had Edwards bells. Four had 6" bells and one had 10" bells. Nothing beats the sound of a fire bell. Just takes your breath away at first sounding as if a large pane of glass has just shattered. How poetic

Out of the eight jobs I've worked; all with fire alarms have all been 6" or 10" bells. My current job of the last four years, the building is littered with 6" Edwards bells. We actually have a watch/warning system. First sounding is called "fire watch" which is called the slow bell which is an intermittent brief ring of the bells about every 3-5 seconds , means the alarms have been activated but the cause is undetermined and has to be investigated. Second sounding is called "fire warning" which is a constant ring of the bells, as the name suggests a fire is confirmed. If the alarms ever failed, there are about 25 air horns in offices and store rooms that we are to use if ever needed.

On my previous position, I was the lone fire alarm response member due to the shift. So every time the alarms were activated, I had to run from where I was to the panel, locate which zone the alarm was activated in and then locate which sensor or pull station was activated. You have only 5 minutes before it auto switches to fire warning and that is when the FD shows up and we have a total evacuation. They went off several times on that position and it was really stressful each time. They were all false alarms, but I was so paranoid that one day I wouldn't be able to locate the source and the FD would have to show.

Only once in four years have we had to do a total evacuation. It was in January and the cause was a faulty heat sensor. We evacuated about 800 people at 10pm into frigid -10C temps. It was crazy.