i guess the point to make would be if there was a fire then it would have been found a lot quicker as there would be something to find. the fact there was no fire then it takes longer to check as you are not looking for something so obvious as say bin on fire. You could be looking for something that is smouldering (not giving of a lot of smoke) so yes this would indeed take some time as you don't want to send everyone back in only for it to go off again because something was missed. The main thing to focus on was everyone evacuated from the premises an accounted for as quick as possible. Identifying the cause of the alarm (false ) doesn't matter how long it takes to check the area, i would look at clearing the alarm once you believe the area id OK and then wait a few minutes to ensure it doesn't go of again before allowing employees to return. Was the false alarm caused by a smoke detector or someone setting of a manual call point by mistake (or deliberately). if a manual point these should be quicker enough to check for the broken glass or someone should say if they activated it at the assembly point. I believe that if a smoke detectors has been activated they should continuously flash on the unit (is this correct anyone) then it should be easy to identify the head that has been activated and check that area. Overall i don't think you have an issue in time declaring the building is safe if there was a fire it would have been found a lot quicker. Of course you could just have standard practice to call the fire brigade straight away rather than investigating first but this may depend on your risk or lack off on site an number of false alarms you get. phil

Not sure where your comments are coming from Bob no one is not taking the fire alarm seriously. Safetyman i think you would need to look at how many false alarms you are getting and identify the reason behind them, even a new systems is not going to reduce false alarms unless the correct heads are selected for each location. i would either review the false alarms you have had and see if you can identify if it was a specific head or speak to the fire alarm company that service you're alarm and see they can recommend either changing heads in areas or identify another cause for the false alarms. the fire service will not put up for long if you keep calling them out for false alarms. Phil

Phil, I do agree with Bob in part, and I could guess that his comments, like mine, come from experience. In the care industry we have spent many years training workers to respond to false alarms and drill; sure they respond quickly, but that's what we're doing. We are redrafting all our fire responses and in future workers will assume that an alarm is a fire, and the fire service will be called out (except in the case of drills when we will take steps to prevent this). I agree with your point Phil that as part of this we will undertake much more robust investigations of false alarms, and will not be so ready to tolerate faulty or quirky detectors. Just for info, one of the main causes of false alarms in rural areas is the Harvest Thrips, aka Thunderbugs. Cambridgeshire Fire Service have run succesful trials fitting cat flea collars around the base of detector heads with a very significant reduction in false alarms, John

Hi Phil, Not so sure about that, but in any event fitting a cat collar is quicker (and cheaper) than changing a detector head, John

Still cheaper to buy a thousand cat collars than change a thousand detectors... However, what we find is that Thrips only affect certain detectors in any particular building; you can easily risk assess before fitting the collars. Sent from the East Riding of Yorkshire, 'Home of the Thunderfly'