Everybody out

When you're talking company fire drills, independent consultant Stewart Kidd has seen it all. "I've come across executives who have hidden under a table when the alarm sounds so that they don't have to evacuate with the 'hoi polloi'," said Kidd. "In some cases, senior management wouldn't even bother to take part in the drills. They'd even go as far as to express a desire that the alarm sounders were made inaudible on the executive floors."
In the post-September 11 era, however, Kidd – principal of the Specialised Loss Prevention Consultancy and president of the Institute of Fire Safety Management – firmly believes that fewer businesses are merely paying lip service to fire safety and building evacuation plans.
Not long before the terrorist attacks on America, Kidd helped a major blue chip organisation update its evacuation and crisis management plans. "I was told by a senior manager that the scenario I had prepared them for was a touch unrealistic," commented Kidd. "After September 11, they then turned around and told me to make the disaster plans harder."
Arson is another growing problem for British businesses. According to the latest UK Fire Service statistics, malicious fires in buildings have increased by 60% over a ten-year period, such that there are now something like 90,000 occurrences every year.
With these combined threats – and others – in mind, it's essential that every organisation must have well-designed and rehearsed building evacuation plans in place. Such plans have long been laid down at One Canada Square – more commonly known as Canary Wharf Tower – in London's Docklands. Graham Moon, life safety manager for the Canary Wharf Group plc, told SMT: "We haven't revised our fire drills [since September 11] but we have carried out a thorough review and found that no changes were necessary. That said, we did review our procedures for simultaneous building evacuation."
As part of the review, Canary Wharf Group plc practised a mass evacuation of the 50-storey tower last October, during which tenants were allowed to use One Canada Square's 32 passenger lifts to exit the building.
Peter Bressington, a trained fire safety engineer and a director at Arup Fire International – the company consulted by the Canary Wharf Group plc with respect to the evacuation drill – acknowledges that the use of lifts goes against the grain of standard procedures for building evacuation. "This particular drill was designed to simulate how tenants would evacuate in anticipation of an imminent catastrophic event as opposed to a fire scenario," said Bressington. "When that happens, you get people out of the building as quickly as possible."
Around half of the 5,576 people who took part in the drill used the lifts which, in the event of an emergency, go directly to the highest floor, pick up the office workers and then travel directly back down to the ground floor at express speed. While Bressington recommends the use of lifts in these circumstances, he doesn't advocate the deployment of escape chutes or parachutes for staff attempting to escape from high rise buildings.
His view is echoed by Stewart Kidd, who has conducted a review of hotel fire safety procedures for the Federation of Tour Operators – and has seen building escape chutes in use at Spanish hotels. "One woman broke both of her legs when travelling down a nylon escape chute," added Kidd. "There's going to be a good deal of friction and potential burns on the skin. Using a chute isn't really a viable proposition, particularly if building occupants are being asked to escape down 20 storeys or more."

<B>Computer modelling in practice</b>
The entire evacuation of One Canada Square lasted just 20 minutes – around half the time that Canary Wharf Group plc's management team expected. In addition, CCTV footage of the stairwells in combination with captured data showed that the stairwells could accommodate significantly higher numbers of people than those actually taking part this time around.
"In general, the systems and procedures we practised worked well," reflected Graham Moon. "We planned the whole thing out with computer modelling, and this helped us no end". Peter Bressington added that the modelling had helped Moon and his team predict how people would move around the building in their efforts to evacuate, ensuring that no-one was hurt during the event proper.
"If you have something like 5,000 people exiting a building simultaneously," suggested Bressington, "there's bound to be a risk of some individuals hurting themselves. Prior modelling can help lessen that risk."
Once the evacuation was planned, tenants' fire marshals were briefed on how to guide fellow members of staff out of One Canada Square. To this end, Graham Moon is quick to point out that the Canary Wharf managers are in regular contact with the marshals throughout the Group's buildings, and offer updated training on a regular basis.
Along with a growing number of other organisations, Canary Wharf Group plc makes use of an automated voice messaging system on top of the traditional alarm sounders to alert tenants in the event of an emergency. Added Moon: "We also have an electronic hard-wired system known as a Shop Alert which allows us to communicate with all our tenants simultaneously. We also make use of radio communications, which are very handy for the construction sites in the area."
Peter Bressington believes that people will usually take more notice of a human voice than an alarm bell. His premise is that members of staff can become immune to alarms, perhaps mistaking them for burglar or car alarms. He also suggests that office workers are more likely to take heed of a live voice message as opposed to a recorded one – but sounds a note of caution. "If the announcer's voice displays a hint of alarm, or there's lots of shouting in the background," he said, "and that comes over the PA it may well induce panic."
Businesses sometimes need to keep those members of staff who are outside (post-evacuation) every bit as well informed as those on the inside if there is a security scare.
Dr John Wyatt, a director of security consultancy the SDS Group and a former bomb disposal expert in the British Army, told SMT that not long after September 11 a generator housed on the roof of a major blue chip concern's London offices backfired. "There was an explosion and lots of smoke," recalled Wyatt, "but the people inside the building weren't overly worried. However, people outside thought a bomb had exploded in the offices, so the incident caused a phenomenal amount of disruption." Wyatt praised the security team, who handled the incident well by keeping everyone informed of events.
In this instance, the false alarm was caused by an accident, but criminals might well use a company's fire safety systems to gain authorised access to its building(s) – indeed, some businesses configure their access control systems to automatically release door locks in the event of a fire.
Arup's Peter Bressington maintains that it's possible to practice good fire safety without compromising security. "For instance," said Bressington, "you can use locks that will enable someone to open a given door from the inside while keeping the door locked from the outside. Such locks are extremely handy for protecting computer rooms and the like."

<B>The need for business continuity</b>
In the event of a real emergency, evacuated staff should be moved at least 500 yards away from the building. That's the advice of Stewart Kidd, although he realises that this can cause much disruption to neighbouring businesses. "It's always a problem in city centres," said Kidd. "Put a cordon around The Royal Exchange, and you will take out half of the City of London in one go."
If fire does damage a company's premises to the extent that they can no longer be used, corporate concerns need to have standby facilities in place so that they can continue to conduct transactions, etc. However, finding the right location for these facilities can be something of a tricky balancing act.
Paul Eskriett, principal security and contingency planning advisor at the Corporation of London, is quick to point out that there's been a significant increase in the number of London-based businesses hiring space in disaster recovery centres post-September 11. "Back-up sites must be far enough away from the danger zone," said Eskriett, "but not too far away that staff might not want to relocate to them."
He went on to emphasise that the majority of big businesses in London had comprehensive crisis management and disaster recovery plans in place long before September 11, primarily as a direct result of the long-standing IRA terrorist campaign on the UK mainland.
One Canada Square offers a classic example of the above. Canary Wharf Group plc's Graham Moon stressed: "We have identified key assets and have back-up systems already in place. We also have a continuity plan. Indeed, we've had that for a number of years now. It should be standard practice for the blue chips."
Bernadette Duncan, operational services manager for the City University in central London, has learnt a good deal about what procedures and systems are needed in the event of a major fire. Last year, she experienced the real thing. One early evening in May, a fire started on the top floor of the City University's College Building in Clerkenwell while some 70 students were sitting an examination elsewhere in the building. Thankfully, no-one was killed or injured by the fire, but the blaze damaged a third of the listed Victorian structure and totally destroyed its roof.
One of the university's in-house security officers was the first person to respond to the fire alarm. He tried his best to extinguish the fire with a hand-held extinguisher, but the blaze was too strong. The officer had already radioed the main Control Room to call the London Fire Brigade, and alerted everyone to evacuate the building. The university offers its security officers specific fire safety training, which is obviously paying off.
Examination invigilators had also been briefed as to what to do in the event of a fire. Duncan – current chair of the Association of University Chief Security Officers (AUCSO) – added: "Whether you have full-time, part-time or visiting staff, make sure they're all fully briefed on what is expected of them."
In the event the fire destroyed 20 rooms in the College Building. In addition, the vast amount of water used by the London Fire Brigade seeped through every level of the structure. "The basement may as well have been a swimming pool," quipped Duncan. Once it was realised that students and staff wouldn't be able to return to the building straight away, City University administrators had to arrange for any personal belongings to be collected by the Fire Brigade. "We also had to arrange for students and staff to be sent home in taxis," said Duncan. "Looking after evacuees is part of the security and safety manager's job."
While the London Fire Brigade was extinguishing the fire, university staff were having to douse rumours that the building had been "destroyed" (as one headline in The London Evening Standard suggested that day).
Duncan commented: "We had to set up a telephone hotline and a website to let people know that courses were still running, and that the fire hadn't completely devastated the College Building."
After the initial response to the fire, the City University's long-term crisis management plans kicked in. "You have to think long-term," emphasised Duncan. "It took us until the following November to find adequate accommodation for everyone."
While businesses carried on as normal, Duncan had to set up cordons around parts of the College Building deemed out of bounds, as well as co-ordinate the retrieval of any remaining personal belongings. "People had to be escorted along with torches and hard hats to collect their belongings," said Duncan.
The whole experience was draining for all concerned, as well as being very traumatic for those staff members who lost their work or belongings, or had their offices destroyed. Counselling services then come into play.
Duncan has since carried out a thorough bomb evacuation drill post-September 11. "We decided to close off certain exits to make people use different exits as they left the building," added Duncan. "It was a good way of making them think."