Notifier Fire Alarms Seismic-certified and In-use

  • Jun 29, 2011

NOTIFIER by Honeywell has earned International Building Code (IBC) seismic certification on its entire portfolio of fire alarm and emergency communications systems. All conventional and addressable fire alarm control panels, digital voice command systems and networking components, including NOTIFIER's ONYX FirstVision touch screen display for first responder scene assessment, passed a series of lengthy shake tests performed by a certified seismic qualification agency.

Many areas throughout the U.S. require seismic-certified fire alarm systems to protect "essential facilities," such as hospitals, police and fire stations, airports and public utilities. Aileen Laforga, systems engineer for Signawest Systems Inc., a NOTIFIER Engineered Systems Distributor in Newark, Calif., said seismic certification is quickly becoming a standard requirement for more and more types of facilities.

"Right now in our area, if you have any type of electrical panel that's more than 20 pounds, seismic certification is required," Laforga said.

In a recent fire alarm renovation of Saint Rose Hospital in Hayward, Calif., Laforga and the Signawest team received news of the NOTIFIER panels' IBC seismic listing just in time.

"To accommodate the hospital's expansion of its fifth floor patient rooms, we needed to upgrade the system with a NOTIFIER NFS2-3030 panel, but it had to be seismic-certified," Laforga said. "No other system could accommodate the size of this facility, which includes administrative offices, an ER and pharmacy. So news of this certification was very timely."

"This seismic standard is fairly new to the fire alarm industry, but given the recent seismic events here and around the world, we anticipate requirements for this certification becoming more common and widespread," said Dan Corbett, NOTIFIER product manager.

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