[labnetwork] TGMS Emergency Response Cordination

[Luciani, Vincent]

Hello Corey,

A couple quick answers:

Here at NIST, we coordinate closely with the NIST Fire and Police Departments.
We have automatic shut-off valves but evacuate for all high alarms
We treat every alarm response as real even if we have high confidence that it is a false alarm.
We have an auto dialer that alerts me and the whole NanoFab staff to any alarm or system error.

John's response was (as usual) right on but I wanted to put in my 2 cents about false alarms.  I have been forming, training and participating in Fab emergency response teams (ERT's) for over 30 years and I have a particular dislike of false alarms because of the huge risk if people start assuming they are false.  I want to share a bit of what I learned.

You must have an agreement with all responders (ERT, site Fire Dept. etc) that all alarms are treated as real.  This is difficult when you are plagued with false alarms.  However, in return you commit to getting to the root cause of every false alarm and implement a fix.  I have successfully almost eliminated false alarms by tenaciously pursuing the root cause of each until I found it.  If I were to Pareto chart the causes of false alarms it would look like this (we have the Honeywell sensors)

1) Someone doing work near a sensor that they did not anticipate setting it off:  Jarring it, soldering nearby, pulling wires in the same conduit.
2) Sensor cartridges getting old.  We replace many of them every 6 months.  Some can go a year as specified.
3) Cross sensitivity.  A very insidious problem.  I have had teams of chemists working on finding what caused a sensor go off.  For example, we learned that burning mercaptan (the stuff that makes natural gas smell) will set of a chlorine sensor.  Honeywell confirmed this.  I learned this after fumes from our propane powered forklift on the loading dock set off an HCL sensor a couple times.

Summarizing, my personal recommendations:
Treat every alarm as real, no matter how painful.
Go after the root cause of every false alarm like a hound dog.
Keep the responders updated and involved in the effort.

Good Luck,

VInce










-----Original Message-----
From: labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu [mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu] On Behalf Of Corey David Wolin
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2015 11:57 AM
To: labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu
Subject: [labnetwork] TGMS Emergency Response Cordination

Hi All

After a few false alarm with our toxic gas monitoring system concerns were raised with regards to the response from fire and PD. They approach to to the alarms is as if they are all false alarms.  Our TGMS system is set to evacuate the building on any high level gas alarm, which includes the dean's office among all other engineering administrative staff.  They also don't contact anyone on the alarm contact list for after hours alarms which is very concerning. This was determined after looking through the alarm history.

I'm curious as to how many of you coordinate with campus first responders and EH&S on the serious nature of the the gases to which the sensors are monitoring?  What do many of you feel the proper emergency response to a high level silane alarm should be? Low Level? In addition, at which point should the TGMS evacuate the building if automatic shutoff valves exist for both high and low level alarms?  

Any feedback and/or advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Corey

-----------------
Corey Wolin
NanoFab Manager
UCDavis Engineering


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