Bomb threats

[HotelSecurity]

Well Bill, they have a template with fill in the blanks. I fill them in, I have the Maids as the floor Wardens etc except if you ever roamed an hotel during the day time I would be surprised if you found 5% of the guests in their rooms. Another problem we have is when the otel is not busy a Maid assigned to the 19th floor can be given rooms on the 2nd floor. According the city fire plan she is supposed to go up to the 19th floor when their is an alarm! Plus we have a Miad that is deaf. She does a grwat job cleaning rooms but in case of a fire alarm we have to go help her, she can not help guests

[N. A. Corbier]

Of course, the problem faced by HotelSecurity is that he can't drill the majority of his evacuees - i.e., the guests who will need to flee the building in the event of fire.

I was in a very good hotel in Vegas once when the fire alarm went off at about 3 a.m. It was complete pandemonium and I have to admit that even with my training I had not bothered to read the fire instructions that were posted on the inside of every room when I checked in. Fortunately, there was no fire (and that caused a PR crisis for the hotel), but you can bet I've never made that mistake again!

It's odd what happens to your pants and shoes when the fire alarm goes off in a hotel...you can bet they won't be where you put them.

I was in a hotel at one point when the fire alarm went off. What was worse than not being able to find my pants or shoes was that I just got in, was in full uniform, with rig.

So, evacuating, everyone immediately thought that I was the security guard and asked what happened, etc.

When I found the actual guard, he was in-house, wore a generic security uniform shirt and a hotel name tag, and was hastily dressed. Which meant that everyone continued to ask the man in the nice uniform and smokey bear hat what was going on, even the police.

About 20% of the hotel actually evacuated. The fire department had to bust two doors in, the occupants were sleeping and refused to open the door.

[HotelSecurity]

About asking security what is going on during a fire alarm. We usually don't know. I am very fortunate in that in Montreal if there are a minimum of 3 staff on duty, we are allowed to have a 2 stage fire alarm system. With this system the general alarm only rings if an evacuation is required. The pre-alarm is not heard by guests. The 2 man "brigade" (Maintenance & Security) investigate while 1 person stands by the fire panel. If there is ANY sign of a real fire then the general aalrm is turned on. It has a fail safe in that if the pre-alarm is not acknowledged the general alarm will automatically ring after 3 minutes.

Very necessary especially these past few months while we are having a new system installed. We are having more than 50 alarms per month!