Bob Armstrong (University of Nottingham - Fire Safety Advisor), shares his knowledge and experiences:
We would normally go out the way we came in, which can't be right. In the event of an emergency you have got to go out by the nearest available exit. If you are young, you're confident and you will be up for it, but the more elderly people tend to be a bit more reluctant. They know the way in, so they trust that, but in actual fact you need to be going, following the exit notices into your staircases. Above all that we expect people to move, we also expect people to help one another.
It is important that we get support, particularly if you are responsible for visitors and guests. Then you are responsible - you get them out to a place of safety and not just abandoned, it's not very nice just to be left in the buildng when it is on fire (laughs). So as I say getting out by the nearest available exit is important, it is paramount and it will save your life, and no matter who you are - what you are, ensure people leave with you. Take them with you. Encourage people to leave, without being aggressive, which is important. The best thing of course is that, if you leave a room that is on fire, shut the door behind you, contain the heat and smoke in the room of origin. This protects the escape route on the corridors, it allows other people and yourself, just a little bit more time to get out, if you like, because they won't react to the fire alarm, even though we encourage them to. So, we are at point now, we are all safe outside.
When you get to the assembly point, if you have got nothing to say to anybody because you have just evacuated. Then stay where you are, don't go until you have been discharged from there by the person in charge. Don't re-enter the building. The fire brigade, the incident commander will hand the building back at some stage to the University, be it a manager, or a security officer and then they'll facilitate the movement back in.
The fire brigade very often shut the alarm down, they silence it. 90 decibels is quite penetrative when they're trying to work in breathing apparatus and they have got this background noise. So they silence the noise, they can communicate between their own officers and breathing apparatus wearers, er, it is not a signal for us to re-enter the building. We often make that mistake. We get a lot of people who try and re-enter.
