Van Duyn Home & Hospital
Onondaga County in upstate New York

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FIRE ALARM TRANSPLANT GIVES HEALTHCARE FACILITY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS UPGRADE
Thirty years ago, Onondaga County in upstate New York, opened the Van Duyn Home & Hospital (VDHH) Residential Health Care Facility. As the only county-run nursing home in Onondaga County, its seven floors and 513 beds offer much-needed care for residents of Syracuse and the surrounding areas. The facility’s property includes one main building, where all residents live, and two small outbuildings for auxiliary services.

Kelly Neish, director of hospital safety and security, has the critical task of preparing the facility and staff for possible emergencies, such as fires. The residents of VDHH have varying degrees of physical incapacity. Moreover, the home offers special care for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Emergency Communications Capabilities
Fire alarm systems have come a long way since the installation of VDHH’s original patchwork of systems, with some dating back to 1979. Maintaining the myriad of obsolete systems was becoming increasingly draining on VDHH’s resources. After presenting their case to the County Legislature, VDHH received approval to fund a complete systems overhaul.

Local security and life safety systems integrator, Syracuse Time & Alarm Co., Inc. (ST&A), had been working with the facility to keep the old system in operation well past its intended life span.

According to John R. Urciuoli, president of ST&A, “The only means of maintaining operation required ingenuity and on the spot engineering to comply with code requirements. This approach presented more maintenance and operational difficulties.”

After working with VDHH and the contract engineer to design the system, ST&A was chosen to deliver an E3 Series Expandable Emergency Evacuation system, manufactured by Gamewell-FCI, as the heart of the new fire protection network.

Plans called for a fire alarm EVAC (emergency voice audio communications) system with the lifespan and flexibility to meet future needs of the VDHH facility. Fast, consistent protection and the ability to provide intelligible voice instructions throughout the facility were the primary system requirements on Neish’s list.

Moving past general EVAC capabilities, Neish found the new system featured selective paging for emergency communications (a.k.a. mass notification). A newly installed phone system will soon be integrated with the fire alarm EVAC system. Authorized personnel will be able to make public address announcements to particular floors or the entire building just by dialing the floor’s extension from their desk phone.

“Remote paging is a huge plus. We won’t have to call the front desk anymore to ask them to do it,” says Neish.

This type of zoned communications complies with the partial evacuation requirements outlined in the NFPA’s (National Fire Protection Association) 2010 edition of its NFPA®72: National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code.

Redundancy and Survivability
Older and less sophisticated systems typically rely on a single fire alarm control command center in which all system intelligence is housed. If damaged, all fire alarm communications cease.

Mark Simpson, ST&A’s assistant vice president of sales and a NICET level IV certified engineering technician, believes a system with distributed intelligence is the ideal solution for VDHH.

“Survivability and intelligibility are key components of the new system. Rather than depending on a central command center to make decisions, the E3 Series decision making is done by (fire alarm control) panels on each floor,” says Simpson. “Most importantly, the staff and residents need to understand the announcement. This installation uses high fidelity speakers and 100 percent digital communications. If you can’t understand the message, you might as well use horns.”

For added protection, all FA/ECS (fire alarm/emergency communications system) components are wired in a loop. This “Style 7” wiring prevents breaks, faults or other disruptions from halting system operations.

“This is a major benefit,” says Neish. “In the past, whenever there was a fault in the system I would have to initiate emergency procedures for every one of our more than 500 residents. Now if there’s an emergency, we can page only the area that’s affected.”

The networking of all control panels was accomplished using a single cable of UTP (unshielded, twisted-pair) wire, minimizing cost and installation time. Comparable systems typically require three or more such cables for integration.

Code Concerns
Although the NFPA updates its codes every three years, it is a challenge for AHJs (Authorities Having Jurisdiction) or inspectors to adopt and enforce new codes so often. Presently, many municipalities across the country still follow 2007, 2004 and even 2001 versions.

The latest edition of NFPA 72® code devotes an extensive, new section (Chapter 24) to Emergency Communications Systems (ECS). With the demand for ECS at an all-time high, many municipalities are preparing to jump ahead to adoption of the 2010 codes over the next two-to-three years. Consequently, VDHH and other facilities considering fire alarm and ECS installations are working to ensure their systems meet the latest code.

One of the primary mandates laid out in the new Chapter 24 requires emergency communications to take precedence over all other system functions, including the fire alarm and other ancillary functions. To comply, the VDHH system is programmed to follow a three-level hierarchy. The lowest priority is general paging via the phone system. Fire alarm functions will override general paging, which includes distribution of any prerecorded emergency messages. Ancillary functions such as VDHH’s resident wandering system are also superseded by the fire alarm.

“One of our special services is that we have a resident wandering system. Residents with dementia wear bracelets that activate door locks when they approach. In the event of a fire alarm, the wandering system is automatically disabled, which is very important to us,” says Neish.

The Bottom Line
When considering a FA/ECS, be sure the system intelligence is distributed for optimum survivability. More sophisticated systems incorporate a scalable architecture with minimal wiring requirements, providing increased functionality and flexibility at a lower cost. These same values hold true for both new construction and retrofit applications such as the Van Duyn Home and Hospital. Neish can now do her job more effectively and the Home’s residents can live safely, without unnecessary disruptions.