In today’s world where health and safety is paramount, fire safety can sometimes be overlooked for the sake of bureaucracy. The howler alarm makes it easy for businesses, campsites, building sites or even temporary accommodation to become fire safe.
Although Fire services throughout the UK now offer to fit and test smoke alarms for free in houses up and down the country, there is no provision like this for businesses or public areas as those mentioned above.
The howler alarm solves this issue with a 118dB siren accompanied by a red strobe light feature for those places where noise can be an issue, like factory floors for example.
The howler can also be linked up to as many as 50 other howler alarms, meaning when one is triggered all the alarms go off together. This is especially useful for large buildings like offices, or even large warehouses where one alarm would not be enough.
Although the number of industrial and commercial fires in the UK is slowly decreasing, the cost of them when they do happen is climbing sharply. Statistics collected by the Association of British Insurers found that the average cost of a fire which is insured is £1.3 billion, and that insurers paid out an average of £3.6 million a day as a result of fires in the UK.
If this trend continues it is estimated that the UK could have paid out more than £10 billion by 2020.
An example of a fire where the damage could have been minimised by the use of a howler alarm is the 2002 Cowgate fire in Edinburgh.
It started above La Belle Angelle nightclub, and spread all along the street to South Bridge, destroying dozens of properties and linked buildings. It was the biggest fire in the Scottish capital’s living memory and it took hundreds of firefighters from 19 fire crews nearly two days to fully extinguish it. It claimed no lives but it damaged most of the street, including part of the University of Edinburgh’s Informatics building, the Edinburgh fringe festival venue, the Gilded Balloon.
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