Voice sounders speed emergency evacuation in Dutch garden centres
Fire-Cryer Plus voice sounders from Vimpex have helped to provide a cost-effective evacuation solution for new retail extensions to two garden centres in The Netherlands. The extensions substantially increased the distance to the fire-escape doors, with the egress time exceeding the required safe egress time by about three minutes when using a conventional warning signal.
Only by using clear spoken directions and staff assistance could the required safe egress time be achieved to the satisfaction of the fire engineers and the fire authorities. Renewing existing public-address equipment and cabling would have been expensive and taken a considerable amount of time, so Prevent IVG looked to Vimpex for a solution.
At each garden centre, around 30 Fire-Cryer Plus multi-message voice sounders were installed on existing cabling to replace conventional sounders and provide a fire-alarm alert, evacuation message, an all-clear and test message with a clarity that ensure everyone evacuated quickly and safely in the alloted time.
