The Law regarding Fire Alarm Systems.

[Tom W]

For those that have seen the film Inception, this could be a dream within a dream within a dream.

haha! 

[Mike Buckley]

David,

You have been drip feeding details about the hospital incident so it has been very difficult to understand exactly what happened. Could you please relate the entire incident to give a better idea of what happened.

[CivvyFSO]

Maybe he was just fed up of you going on about it?

[Graeme]

True, he might of had diarrheoa.

verbal?

[Meerkat]

I engaged the engineer in conversation on the subject. I can't remember the exact conversation but I did most of the talking

So did he actually tell you anything?  It's not clear how if you "did most of the talking"?

Was it this one BTW? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7168206.stm

[kurnal]

It cant have been Meerkat it must have been another major hospital fire.

The Investigation report conducted by the NHS does not mention any problems with the fire alarm.

http://www.preventionweb.net/files/13954_reviewoflondonhospitalfires1.pdf

Or maybe there is a conspiracy of silence?

[Meerkat]

Well the numbers in the BBC report for patients and staff evacuated are exactly the same as the example given by David (though I understand numbers may have been over-reported by the BBC at the time?) and this fire certainly seems to have started in the upper areas of the building.  But as you say Kurnal it can't be the same building because there's no mention of fire alarms failing in the official report.

I'll go and look for another one.

[Wiz]

I'd go so far as to suggest that the report infers that the fire alarm did operate because it reports Dr Jones as saying, "We did think it could have been a false alarm".   I'm assuming that the 'it' was the sound of the fire alarms.

Yeah, David must have been talking about another London hospital with a fire in the roof area about 3 years ago.

[Tom W]

You lot are enjoying this one aren't you?

Its like your christmas presents to stretch your fire safety knowledge muscle!

Just remember play nice or they will be no mince pies for you all

[Mike Buckley]

It is interesting looking at the NHS report where the Major Incident Plan came unstuck when no-one had the "time" to invoke it. It reminds me of an exercise I ran which was designed to test a hospital's Major Incident Plan. It too came unstuck because no-one invoked a Major Incident, as far as the Brigade was concerned the incident did not trip the Major Incident Catagory, the same for the Police and the Ambulance Service. No one at the Hospital invoked their Major Incident Procedure because no one else said it was a major incident.

It makes me wonder how many Major Incident Plans would fail because there is not a clear directive as to when a major incident occurs and who should invoke the procedures.

[AnthonyB]

We (well some of us) are assuming it went silent because it failed - more likely that it was silenced prematurely as I know of that happening loads of times with incidents......


.....New Look anyone???

[Mike Buckley]

Or it was silenced as part of the procedure to prevent unnecessarily alarming patients?

[Steven N]

I'm losing the will to live which on firenet is very unusual