Fire alarm installations are central to setting up a commercial building’s security against fire, and this can protect human life in the case of a blaze. Different types of fire protection services may be found today, but fire alarm installations are one particular effort that must be taken seriously. Fire alarm inspection should be done regularly to ensure that a building’s alarm system is in fine working order, and fire alarm systems can be installed, repaired, or updated as needed. Workers from a fire alarm company can be brought on-site for fire alarm installations work, for example, or updating older hardware to maintain fire protection standards. Any responsible building owner will make sure that fire alarm installations are done, and fire alarm installations might also be done if an older building is purchased and its fire protection hardware is not up to modern standards. What causes fires in residential buildings today, and what sort of damage might be done? Many lives can be saved if fire protection is taken seriously.
Fire and Its Damage
A number of hazards may threaten a building today, from flash floods to a hurricane or tornado to an earthquake. Some of these hazards might only happen in certain parts of the United States, but a fire can happen anywhere. Some of the most commonly affected commercial buildings include hotels, motels, warehouses, and hospitals, and statistics have been kept over the years to determine how often these commercial buildings catch fire, and why. For example, it has been determined that every single year in the United States, hotel and motel fires claim 15 lives and injure about 150 people, and cause $76 million in property damage. Hospitals also often suffer from fire: from 2006 to 2010, American fire departments responded to an average of 6,240 fires in or on healthcare facilities per year. On top of that, warehouses may catch fire as well, based on the items being stored in them and how careful the warehouse crew are while handling such materials. But trends have been positive fore warehouse fires. These fires cause the most property damage, but lower rates of injury per 1,000 fires. And the best news is that warehouse fire rates have gone way down in the last few decades. Nearly 4,700 warehouse fires were recorded in 1980, but by 2011, only 1,200 took place.
Fire Alarm Installation and Care
One of the first lines of defense against fire in a commercial building is simple awareness of the problem, and this can save both lives and property. For immediate warning of a fire, fire alarms will display bright lights and set off loud, distinctive alarms throughout the building. Such a system should be designed by installers so that the alarm can be heard no matter where in the building a person might be. Someone could get trapped in a flaming building if they simply couldn’t hear the alarms, so the placement of such alarms, and their volume, are tailored to prevent this. For the benefit of the deaf, these alarms will flash bright lights, and when a person sees the lights flashing on these distinctive, wall-mounted alarms, the message will be clear.
These alarms also send a signal to nearby fire departments automatically. While it is possible for a person to use a landline phone or a mobile phone to call a fire department, this method may not be 100% reliable, so that signal is sent no matter what. In this way, the fire alarms will not only allow occupants to evacuate and save their own lives, but bring over firefighters to put out the blaze.
Because of how severely fires can threaten both property and lives, fire codes exist to regulate every public building’s readiness to alert people to a fire and notify nearby fire services. There is too much on the line for this to be left to chance. When a building is constructed, for example, inspectors from city hall will look over the fire alarm system to ensure that everything meets current standards. Similarly, when a person buys a commercial building, he or she must have fire inspectors visit the premises and check the fire alarm systems. If the system is deemed insufficient, it must be updated or replaced.
