Fire procedures in hotels

[Shelle]

I am wondering if there are any fire fighters that read these pages? Basically I am trying to determine whether a hotel in London breached any legal procedures during evacuation. The hotel (6 floors) had an evacuation in the early hours and with only 3 members of staff on site their evacuation procedures was a shambles. they claim the only responsibilty they have is to sound the alarm. It was NOT their responsibilty to ensure we all vacated the building, nor to assist at fire stairs etc. Luckily on this ocassion it was a false alarm, but we were very concerned at the lack of staff available to ensure safe evacuation. Anyone know the exact procedures that hotels should follow?

[kags]

We certainly used to have a firefighter who regularly contributed to this site, but I haven't seen his name for a while (unfortunately).

[cheyenne]

i cant believe its not their responsibilty to make sure all hotel guests are evacuated and then counted at the proper place outside the hotel.i would certainly report this hotel.

[wizard]

Some places of mass public interest will usually have Fire Wardens or other people trained to deal with the event of a fire. I - for one - am trained in such tactics where I work and our responsibilites are helping people from the building if a fire were to break out, man fire exits to mark them clearly to people evacuating the building and fight the fire if we are in no way of putting our own safety at risk. The obvious reason we do this is a good measure to the general public and colleagues. We obviously don't want the responsibility of dead people on our hands. To learn that a hotel wouldnt adopt such an attitude to safety is shocking. In terms of legality, as long as the fire alarm has being sounded the hotel staff do not need to do anything else. It is then on that the people staying in the hotel will be responsible for there own safety. There is the obvious arguement that the people won't be able to hear the alarm because they are sleeping but part of the conditions of building a hotel is having a fire alarm that can be heard from each room above a certain decibel level. What the exact level is I dont know. Sorry if its dragged out this answer but I hope ive helped!

[Lindy Loo]

Check out www.london-fire.gov.uk This is the London Fire Brigade site. If you click on the 'contact us' link it gives ways to contact them, or the Borough Teams through out London. They would be in good position to advise about your problem if you give them the details.

[Laura-sakura]

This happened to me last New years Eve. Four of us were staying in a youth hostel but only two of us had paid. The fire alarms went off at 4am and as we all made our way out into the pouring rain we were certain that we were going to get busted when the staff checked the number of guests with their records. They didn't do that at all and guests were just wandering back into the building and the 3 staff took no notice.