[bbctvtechop]

As can be heard briefly in the Five Live clip, a set up where alarms can be clearly heard on air is less than ideal for a broadcast environment. Given the speed at which they had to leave, but also the speed at which they were able to clear the alarm and get back on air, it seems there's not a standard for broadcast stepping-up system in place in Salford?

It could just have been that either the alert was within the broadcast zone or that there were multiple alerts escalating it. 

I'm sure a long time ago a photo was shown of the Breakfast/NWT gallery with orange and red lights with a caption along the lines of now we know what these are for.

Yes, v true - and I suppose certainly the Breakfast set being in the middle of the newsroom makes it hard to have it in a different zone like many studios are!

Yup. I'm fairly sure I've mentioned this before on one of the forum's predecessors, but when I went on a tour of MediaCity a good few years ago, you could clearly see the two-stage alarm system that they had in place. Meaning that in theory, a call point or smoke detector could be triggered in one area of the building, and there would be a few minutes to investigate the cause before the entire building got evacuated. In the meantime, it would alert others in the building to prepare to evacuate (hence why in the Tony Livesey clip, he starts to explain the situation before the alarm sounds). 

I do have to wonder now if that's changed or if the entire building gets immediately evacuated if the cause is in a kitchen or canteen? This is at least the 3rd time that it's happened during breakfast programmes and knocked output on BBC One, Radio 5 Live and Radio Manchester off air.

(Or maybe the safety warden is just too busy eating their bacon butty to check in time )

I have never worked in Salford but I assume a similar system operates to NBH...

NBH is split into multiple fire zones - Old BH, Peel Wing and Bridge, and then groups of floors in New BH (I think 7&8, 5&6, 3&4, G&2, and basements). This means you could have a full evacuation of floors 7 and 8, but the rest of the building continues functioning as normal, albeit on a state of alert in broadcast areas, as below.

There is a FOUR stage alarm system for broadcast areas, and one stage for office areas.

1) Blue flashing lights - the Duty Operations Manager, MCR and Security Control room receive these for 15 seconds the moment a smoke head or call break point is activated. The whole process can be cancelled at this point without anyone else knowing, and is mostly used for testing.

2) Orange flashing lights - if after 15 seconds the alert hasn't been cancelled, all broadcast areas in the whole building receive Orange flashing lights. At this point, technical staff should brief the presenter that they have a potential evacuation about to happen, and - working with the producer - change running orders if deemed necessary. The whole gallery should be briefed by the director about how to proceed should the alert progress to evacuate. This would include closing mics and cutting to some kind of emergency playout the moment the lights go red, then standing up and walking out. At the orange stage, any office workers with PEEPs, and their assistance buddy if necessary, will receive an alert to their device telling them to immediately evacuate.

3) Silent red flashing lights - If, after two minutes of orange flashing lights, the alert has not been cancelled, then it progresses to red in the zone which activated the original alert. Office workers in the zone will hear tannoy announcements telling them to evacuate - this is the first they will know of any emergency. In technical areas, the orange light continues to flash and the red one also activates, but no tannoy announcement is made. There are 10 seconds of red and orange flashing lights and no tannoy to allow mics to be closed.

4) Red flashing lights with tannoy - Then, 10 seconds afterwards, the orange lights extinguish leaving red only, and the tannoy starts in technical areas. In all other fire zones, stage 2 continues until the emergency is over and system reset.

If at any time during the alert, a second smoke head or call point is activated, it progresses automatically to stage 3 in the fire zone the second activation happens. Once in stage 3, it cannot be cancelled and a full evacuation and progression to stage 4 is committed.

So, from the moment an alert starts, technical staff have up to 2m25s to prepare for an evacuation and brief their presenters. Our training says that the moment a red light appears we should close mics and cut to a slate, which has been properly briefed to us by the director in advance. Presenters should be fully aware of what is happening (they usually can see the lights too) and also be briefed by the director to shut up, stand up, and walk out the moment the lights go red.

Yet as you can see from the videos above, and even worse videos I've seen in the past where presenters are saying "I'm sure we don't need to do anything" on air while the tannoys in the background urge them to "leave the building immediately" are shocking. The whole point of the multi stage process plus those extra 10 seconds is to keep it relatively clean on air. That last 5live example is really good - the presenter is clearly properly briefed and on the ball, and he explains he needs to evacuate before the tannoys start, which is perfect. That Breakfast one where he won't stop apologising to the guest while just sitting there is awful.

I've experienced 5 full evacuations and countless stage 2s in my zone. Only once went straight to full evac (ie straight to stage 3, no orange light phase) due to a technical fault with the alarm system. Another time we were sitting in stage 2 for over an hour while another fire zone was evacuated. And the worst time was when stage 2 activated 2 minutes before on air, and stage 3 hit about 10 seconds into the headlines. Due to the timing it was difficult to communicate clearly to the production team what the situation and plan was, but we still didn't hear the tannoy on air or see the presenter leaving.

As I was also a fire warden my extra duties included making sure the studio, gallery, newsroom and toilets etc were empty before evacuating myself, so that I could say "This area of the building is clear" to the DOM at the muster point.

Side note - it was incredible the number of (mostly office) staff who simply walked into a different fire zone during their own zone's evacuation so they could carry on working and not have to actually evacuate.