Dear safety bods (that includes me!)

An interesting situation has come up where I work and I am after some advice from my fellow safety professionals....

We are about to employ a profoundly deaf cleaner (she will not be able to hear the alarm) who will be required to clean a boarding house of 96 rooms, plus common areas. She may also have to go into other buildings all of which have separate fire alarm systems, some of which are quite old.

Does anyone have any experience of this and can suggest a solution?

As there are so many rooms it would be impossible to rely on strobe/flashing sounders as they won't be installed in every room so I'm thinking of some sort of paging type device that vibrates when the fire alarm sounds...Does anyone have experience of these and can the vibrating device be connected to several different fire alarms?

Many, many thanks,

BL15

BL15 pager is the way to go.

Had the same issue a few years back with severely impaired hearing in a factory. Contacted the company who provided and maintained the fire alarm system who were very helpful, told us what type of devices would work with their system and then installed the software to make it work.

Simple solution.

Hi We use a system called " Deaf Alerter"
Dave

We use deaf alters at the college as well. Works well.

Can you still get pagers these days, abit 80's.... Pager, Mobile phone (on vibrate of course) or the installation of flashing lights/beacons. As this is a boarding house what controls to you have for any deaf guest?

BL15

As commonly advised on other forum threads about people with medical conditions and disabilities which might affect their safety and capability, it would be worthwhile for you and/or the prospective cleaner's line manager/supervisor to arrange to have a chat with her if this hasn't already been done.

Among other things you may find out what arrangements, if any, were made for her by any previous employers and whether she found them to be effective or not. You'll also find out if she lip-reads and/or uses sign language. In addition, although you understand her to be profoundly deaf, (i.e. no hearing at all), it's possible that she might have a cochlear implant and that this enables her to hear some sounds especially loud ones such as fire alarms.

Another point: If the cleaner is provided with an effective warning device which is activated by the sounding of the fire alarm wherever she is within the building, this surely deals with the greater risk she might otherwise face from fire because of her deafness. If so, introducing an electronic or manual log system specifically for her, as suggested by Kim at #8, could be considered excessive.

Also, though she might have negligible or no hearing, her faculties of sight, smell and touch may be fine and therefore of use to her in the event of a fire occurring.

My mention of smell above reflects the fact that quite a number of fires are initially identified by people who notice an unusual smell which could be smoke or something burning. I've experienced it myself late one afternoon in a large hotel in Eastern Europe during the 1980s. A fire broke out in one of the bedrooms allegedly because its occupant had fallen asleep while smoking. As the hotel had no internal fire doors, the first inkling that I and some others on the upper floors had about the fire was a smell akin to that of burnt toast coming from somewhere. Somewhat surprisingly the hotel did not have a conventional fire alarm system, so its guests and visitors were alerted (more likely confused) by various members of staff running about shouting and banging on bedroom doors! :-(

Reply to post no7
"We use deaf alters at the college as well. Works well."

Is that for silent praying then?

Come on, it is Friday...