A Study on the Awareness of Fire Safety and Evacuation Guide System

The purpose of this study is to find out the most effective evacuation alarm sound which is the one of the most important element of the evacuation guidance system as a fundamental mechanism to minimize the damages of a fire. In this regard, a survey was conducted against the firefighting officers and the general public with questions about the general awareness of fire and their preference to various kinds of fire alarm sounds. The result showed that 1) even though the awareness of the interviewees on fire was improving while there were in familiar places like homes or works. But, when they were situated in unfamiliar locations, the fire safety awareness could not be deemed to be strong. This in turn calls for the education of the public and improvement of the existing policies for the enhancement of the fire related safety awareness in unfamiliar environments. 2) For the question about the possible time they could survive in a fire or the time required for safe evacuation, it turned out that the interviewees were thinking of the time required for evacuation to be short, which calls for proper actions. 3) When the visibility in a fire situation is highly limited, the most preferred answer for the alarm sound was a female voice, saying "The emergency exit is this way," accompanies with flashing lights of sirens for the emergency evacuation guidance.