False alarms can cost money, time and even lives if the fire brigade is preventing from attending a real fire.
It has been estimated that in the UK the annual cost of false alarms is £1billion. This is a shocking figure considering that only 10% of systems cause 80% of false alarms.
Recurring false alarms can even lead to a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation as workers come to expect any alarm that sounds to be a false alarm. In a real emergency these people will not react with haste and any delays in evacuation could lead to them coming to harm.
The time it takes to evaluate an alarm situation and evacuate buildings can also be very costly to businesses as the working day is interrupted and resources are consumed.
But while businesses can suffer financial losses due to false alarms, the major worry here is that whenever the fire service is attending a false alarm it means one less fire team is available to tackle real emergencies. The idea that people could be harmed or even die in a fire while a false alarm is being dealt with is very worrying.
Minimising false alarms is therefore imperative in any property with a fire alarm system. If you have control over the alarm system that is in use it would be worth investigating your options: it may be possible to reduce the number of false alarms through simple upkeep and maintenance or perhaps it would be better to upgrade components of the system, or the entire fire system itself.
If frequent false alarms are a problem, keeping a detailed log of each false alarm (such as the time, date, location, originating device and any other events that were happening that day) could help you eliminate the source of the false alarms.
In some cases the false alarm is not due to faults within a fire alarm system and can be put down to malicious activity. Locations where this is more likely are shopping centres or other public buildings and schools.
Discount Fire Supplies sell top of the range fire alarm systems that are designed to minimise false alarms.
