By Rose Blanchard
Nearly five years have passed since the Grenfell Tower fire and since then we have seen changes to legislation regarding fire safety. A ban on combustible materials like AMC cladding in high rise buildings came into effect, new sprinkler systems installed in all residential blocks above 11 meters, and the implementation of the Building Safety Bill.
Fire alarms are all over the country, in every home, hospital, office, pub, cinema… they’re everywhere. But are they working? Is this an outdated system?
Admit it, you’ve sat in a room and waited for someone to come and tell you that the fire alarm was real. Even when you were high up in a building, you’ve sighed, groaned, maybe slowly began to gather your things. But you haven’t panicked, have you? And even when told to exit the building, you’ve dragged on behind your friends and colleagues, imitating a herd of sheep being guided by Gary, the jobsworth health and safety rep who has waiting for this moment and is proudly sporting his fluorescent yellow vest, repeatedly yelling: “Keep it moving chaps, if this was a real fire, you’d all be burnt to a crisp”.
A real fire
Every in-house business in the country is required to have a fire safety plan. They are required to know the meeting point, where the fire extinguishers are, which fire extinguisher does what and so on. Do you know your fire plan meeting spot? Do you know how to use that fire extinguisher if you had to?
Maybe you do. Maybe you’re the one that’s on it. Maybe you’re Gary.
But more importantly, all businesses in the country are asked to conduct fire drills where they practice the event of a real fire, after the alarm goes off. You are told not to panic and to exit calmly but quickly- which seems fair enough. Growing up you probably regularly had drills at school, then at college, at university, at three o’clock in the morning, in student accommodation when someone decided it was a clever idea to light up a blunt in their room.
But nothing too serious. Nothing scary.
At this point it is important to note, I am not speaking to everyone, but the ones I am speaking to… well they know who they are.
A report conducted by Offices.co.uk showed that 75% wait for someone else to react when a fire alarm sounds, and only 10% act immediately. And that other 15%, those are our sheep bumbling along, out of the building but in no great hurry.
Our brain usually says it’s nothing to worry about, it’s probably an accident, it’s always going off, it’s a drill. Our head rarely says, ‘it’s a fire we need to move.’
In fact, 38% of people, according to the same study, will wait for at least two minutes before reacting.
“I was at the climbing gym the other day, and I know it sounds so bad, but the fire alarm went off and no one stopped climbing, we all just ignored it. I was with two of my friends and we kind of looked at each other and then looked at everyone else and just kind of shrugged,” said rock climber Becky Stratton, 20.
“One of the instructors had to come round telling everyone to leave and even then, everyone was a bit rubbish about it. I know this is so bad, but me and my friends went and got our bags from upstairs.
“I think I’ve ignored every single fire alarm I’ve ever heard until someone has asked me to move.”
Are we all a bit desensitised to the fire alarm? Is it keeping us as safe as it should be?
“Our fire alarm is broken, and the building managers have done nothing to rectify it. The fire brigade gets called out every time. No body even moves anymore because there’s no point. If there was a real fire we wouldn’t know and we’d be screwed,” said Emma Doyle, 23, a journalist and blogger living in an apartment block in Manchester.
In 1979, a fire started on the second floor of the Woolworths in Manchester.
Customers eating in the restaurant ignored it when they heard it.
Evacuation expert Prof Ed Galea said: “People who had purchased and paid for their meal… even though they could see the smoke, they could smell the smoke, they could hear the alarms going off, they felt they had sufficient time to complete their meals before evacuating.”
Ten people died in that fire.
Now obviously that’s an extreme example and I doubt that anyone would see smoke in this day and age and continue ploughing through there McDonalds unfazed. But it does speak to something about our relationship with fire and fire alarms.
You don’t need me to tell you a fire is dangerous. If you’ve got far enough in life to be reading this article, you know.
Be safer, be smarter
Remember when you were a child and your parents told you not to touch the iron because it was hot, but you did it anyway because you were stupid and small and curious? Remember that burning red welt on the tip of your index finger? That wasn’t fun, was it?
Imagine that every time an alarm sounded, and you didn’t move, you would have that pain again, only multiplied by one thousand. All you would have to do to avoid it would be to exit the building you were in.
Well, that’s the reality folks. Of course, more often than not the fire alarm is nothing and we file out only to file back in. But why chance it? What a stupid way to go? How terrible you’ll feel if you’re wrong.
In 2017, the BBC reported the lack of working smoke alarms contributed to the deaths of 9 children in five fatal fires.
A fire alarm should be your best friend.
So, make a fire safety plan and follow it.
Test your fire alarm. Get it fixed if it’s broken. Because, even when it gets it wrong, it was trying to save your life.
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