What’s the issue with false fire alarms? This is a question our fire alarm engineers are often asked when completing fire alarm maintenance services. If you haven’t had an issue with false fire alarms before, you might not know why they are a problem. That’s why we have put this blog post together. It will help you understand what the issue with false fire alarms is and why fire alarm maintenance is so important.
False fire alarms can cause many, many problems. These problems range from the endangering of lives right through to being incredibly costly to the economy.
Research by the FIA shows us that the estimated cost of false fire alarms is actually over £1 billion pounds a year. That is in the UK alone!
However, on a smaller scale, false fire alarms can be a cost to businesses too. A false fire alarm can result in a loss of productivity for example. Workers will stop what they are doing to leave the building in case of a fire. If it’s a false alarm, then there is a loss of production and productivity.
These false fire alarms will also result in a lot of disruption when staff have to evacuate too. What if your sales team were closing a huge deal and had to leave the office? Perhaps the customer service team were already behind with calls from customers? Machines in the factory need to be turned off, and then restarted on return too. This all takes time. Time that could be a lot better spent.
A false fire alarm means that retained firefighters are also released unnecessarily too. What if they were needed elsewhere, or pulled away from a real fire? Could you live with that on your conscience? This could also result in possible future call-out charges for the attendance of fire and rescue services. A cost that could easily be avoided with well-maintained fire alarms.
You may also find that you have increased insurance premiums due to false fire alarms too. The insurers may believe that future fire alarms could be ignored as occupants believe it to be a false alarm. In turn, the building could be more at risk.
Avoid the issues of false fire alarms in your business and call our fire alarm maintenance engineers now.
