Multilingual Voice Sounders Improve Safety for Multicultural Community

High-output Maxi Fire-Cryer® Voice Sounders from Vimpex Limited have been used to solve a challenging voice evacuation project at St. James Wholesale Market in the heart of Bradford. Multi-message voice sounders were identified as significant safety enhancements in the event of an incident at the market. However, justifiable concerns were raised on the question of how to clearly and unambiguously communicate evacuation or emergency messages to those workers whose first language is not English. The market is housed in a large warehouse-type building which is open on two sides. Therefore sounders loud enough to be heard over the hubbub of negotiating traders and delivery vehicles was also of paramount importance.

Local fire systems company, Rosse Systems, with the help of voice sounder experts, Vimpex Ltd were able to offer the ideal solution. A site survey identified that not only were high-output sounders necessary to give the required amount of coverage, but also dual-lingual messages would need to be used. Many workers at the site have Urdu as their first language so to enhance safety Bradford City Council engineers specified dual language sounders.

10 Maxi Fire-Cryers®, each with three English-Urdu messages, were installed to give clear and concise instructions to the workers in the building as to what to do in case of fire or system test. The Maxi Fire-Cryer® outputs 116dBA and features a fully weatherproof enclosure making it ideal for external use and large open areas.

The Maxi Fire-Cryer® is just one of a family of voice sounders that are suitable for the broadest range of fire and evacuation applications. The units require no special wiring and can be retrofitted to existing installations. They can be fully synchronised and have a low current consumption allowing simple replacement of existing sounders and bells. The Fire-Cryer’s® multi-message capability also ensures that ‘system test’ and ‘all clear’ messages can easily be transmitted avoiding confusion with the fire/evacuation alarm.