To evacuate or not to evacuate..

[Haloric]

Hi
I work for a company in London. We have just had a fire alarm and evacuated. Afterwards we are told this was because of 'wind and dust in a sensor' due to opening a window.

We are told (by e-mail) not to evacuate again if it goes off, as the sensor is faulty.

Is this legal ? I am concerned about this. The company has about 300 people in total.
We have been told this once before. If it is a real fire will someone run round the building ? what are the guidelines on this ?.


There is no indication how long this situation may last, and if it happens this evening or tomorrow what should be done. I think this is shows a poor understanding of safety issues, its hardly fail safe.

Thanks

[afterburner]

The management response to an alarm of fire is to ignore it. The mangement response to faulty fire detection is to ignore an alarm. The fire alarm will actually be a person running round the building. Simple questions come from this: - do you think this running person is an adeqaute fire alarm? Do you think your enforcing authority will accept the ruinning person as an adeqaute fire alarm? Do you you think the 'respnsible person' has discharged their legal duties with regard to maintenance of the existing fire alarm? How did they nominate / volunteer the running person?

[Gasmeter]

I suggest a call to your local fire service, they'll probably be more than happy to send an officer round to explain the company's responsibilities to the management.

[Graeme]

This may seem a bit obvious but why din'y your company get the detector looked at instead of presuming it's going to go off again.

Telling people to ignore it is stupid.

[David Rooney]

And if your boss needs an engineer to come and look at the system..... you have my number!!  =D

[kurnal]

If they are so incompetent to tell you to ignore the alarm do you have any confidence in their diagnosis of the cause of the alarm in the first case?
And if it is full of dust is the system being maintained?
If the detector is faulty the first action should be to call the engineer or in house team, the second action to disable the detector temporarily till the problem is fixed ( if possible) .

The email should have debriefed the evacuation, thanked staff for supporting it, assured them that the system would be maintained to minimise nuisance alarms and asked them to continue to evacuate on the sound of the alarm. And the running man should have then been offered a job transfer to become a fire warden.

[Allen Higginson]

I would ask them to put it into their official fire procedure policy! ? It is more likely a faulty or contaminated detector than dust just blowing into the detector and so will probably go off again. He should have got the maintenance company in to check it out ASAP.
It sounds like you have an employer who rates productivity over staff welfare - I would keep a hard copy of the e-mail for future reference in case it is not "dust" next time.

[messy]

I suggest a call to your local fire service, they'll probably be more than happy to send an officer round to explain the company's responsibilities to the management.

I agree.

If you visit www.london-fire.gov.uk and look for your office's local Boro fire safety team. Phone them anonymously (with 300 workers, i reckon you'd get away with it) and slip the term 'Alleged Fire Risk' into the complaint and you'll have someone around within a couple of hours.

I cannot see any IO being happy with that situation