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DETECTION AND ALERTING DEVICES (page 3)
A telephone is not a luxury in the barn. In case of injury or fire it is your means of summoning professional help. Calling for help in the midst of an emergency, however, should not require that you do anything more than read. Even if you are on your own property, the stress of the situation may cause you to forget your address. To make this extremely important call and relay information accurately, post a sign at eye level next to the phone. Clearly print out instructions. You have to tell the caller exactly what to do and say, as in this example: CALL FIRE DEPARTMENT AT (your fire department's number or 9-1-1 if that service is available in your area). SAY: I HAVE A HORSE BARN FIRE AT (stable address). If special directions are needed to reach your property, post those also. Here’s the sign I created for my barn:
Please
Download the sign (568k PDF) and make as many copies as you
need, write in your own information, and slide the signs into plastic sheet
protectors before posting them in every location you think they’re needed.
In some rural areas, where everyone knows everyone
else, it may only be necessary to say, “This is Joe Smith, my barn’s on fire!”
and help will be on its way, but most of us with horse properties live in
suburban or semi-rural areas, so we have to make sure that everyone with
access to our property knows where the phone(s) and signs are and can read
the instructions. If you have a multi-lingual barn make
sure you have instructions printed in the appropriate languages.
You have three choices when considering voice communication
from your barn, and each has its pros and cons:
A wall-mounted,
wired phone tethers you to a specific part of your barn, so if you’re calling the
vet, for example, you might not be within cord’s length of the ailing horse’s stall
and will have to go back and forth to check on current symptoms. Or, you may
not be able to leave the horse because you’re providing first aid (such as applying
pressure to an arterial wound) so you have to rely on another person to relay information
to the vet. On the other hand, everyone always knows where the phone is and
can probably get to it in the dark.
A cordless phone gives you more freedom than the wired wall-mounted phone, but if the last person
who used the cordless phone got distracted after finishing their call, they may have
set the phone down anywhere and forgotten all about it. The cordless phone
might not be in its holder when it’s needed.
Having a cell
phone in your pocket is great and offers the advantage of not needing wires (which
can be destroyed by heat and flames), but if you’re calling 9-1-1 you will have to
provide your address, which means having your information signs posted in several
places, including the exterior of the barn or a nearby building where there is good
lighting. The bad part about relying on cell phones is that not everyone has
a cell phone or knows how to use one, so the person in the barn who has to notify
help must have a well-charged cell phone on their person at all times.
I
want to leave you with one sobering, last thought about alerting systems when it
comes to saving animals’ lives (or human lives). Unlike
the use of detection and alerting systems in high-rise office buildings or other
commercial establishments occupied by humans, where the warning allows for immediate
evacuation by ambulatory people—in other words, they hear the alarm and leave the
building on their own power—confined animals do not have that option. The most
modern, technologically advanced detection and alerting systems available can’t save
animal lives if there’s no one on site to begin evacuation immediately. Long
before a fire may even be noticed, there may be enough smoke generated to
kill every occupant.
The only sure means of containing a fire and
saving lives is with a sprinkler system. If you can’t afford to have
a sprinkler system installed in your new barn while it’s under construction,
or don’t have the funds to retrofit your existing barn, then you must be as
pro-active as possible. You should use fire retardant products in construction
or in special applications to existing structures. You must keep your barn
clean and free of hazards. You should schedule fire drills at least twice
a year—more often if you have many people in and out of your barn at different
times. And, second to the value of a sprinkler system, you should have
a centrally-monitored detection and alerting system that is the best you can
afford.