Building Security, Alarms, & Evacuations

[lady.nymphaea at faerielands.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Sister Mary Lunatic" <klaatu at p...> 
wrote:
> I've seen survivors of the World Trade Center disaster relate how 
> many of their co-workers either stayed at their desks or dawdled   
> around before deciding to leave the building, and who  perhaps died 
> as a result of their procrastination.
> 
> I used to be employed by a fairly large company, in a building that 
> housed approximately 3000 employees.  At least once a year, we 
> would hold a full-scale practice evacuation, with all employees 
> leaving the building. However, we knew exactly when the evacuation 
> would occur, and treated it as a lark and a mini-holiday from  
> work.  During the year, we would also have 2 or 3 tests of the  
> alarm systems, but would not actually get up and leave the
> building.
> 
> HOWEVER, occasionally, perhaps once or twice a year at least, there 
> was a false alarm.  The alarm system might accidentally have been 
> turned on by a careless security guard, or it might suffer a short
> circuit.  On those occasions, NO ONE even attempted to evacuate in 
> the belief that a real emergency might be occurring.  The most we 
> would do is stick our heads out into the hallways and see if 
> anything was going on.  Therefore, I can see where a real emergency 
> danger situation would catch us all still in our offices, wondering 
> if anything serious was actually happening.

Whenever there are false alarms, an email goes out to the entire 
office; this also goes for when things are being tested, or when fire 
or police vehicles are outside the building (even if it's just an 
officer parked in the lot running in to pay the cable bill.)

> Has anyone else had similar experiences?  It seems to me that this 
> might explain why so many did not leave the WTC immediately when 
> they first became aware of a problem.

Yup. Company I worked for in June 1998. Tornado warning, worked on 
7th floor of building. The sky became green, and hail kept coming 
down. I was on a phone call with a guy in Iowa when the sirens 
started wailing. He told me to "get out of there and call back when 
the warning was over". I went into the stairwell with one other co-
worker. No one else would leave, and no one else in the other 
companies on the 7th floor left either. Luckily the funnel never 
touched down, but the fact no one else wanted to leave 
their "precious" post was rather disturbing.

Meril