Area of Refuge Signs

What is an Area of Refuge?  

An area of refuge (sometimes called an area of rescue) is a designated spot in a building where individuals with mobility challenges can wait for help in case of an emergency and evacuation is not safe or is not possible. It is intended for the elderly, persons with disabilities, sick people, and anyone else who cannot use the stairs to exit.  It has a call button for help and a 2-way voice communication system.

The 90-Minute Emergency Lighting Test - What Is It?

Emergency lights are important in the event of an emergency, as they can help individuals safely evacuate the building. Building safety codes require that your emergency lights function for at least
1.5 hours. The 90-minute emergency lighting test makes sure that your emergency lights are ready to handle any situation.

Businesses, schools, towns.  All require a team of dedicated professionals to keep them up and running. That's why, in order to stay on top of everything, the best leaders know you need to hire
the best people to help take care of the actual buildings. The last thing a business owner or school administrator needs is a sudden, unforeseen distraction that disrupts their daily rhythm. That
disruption could come in the form of a Fire Marshal.

Most people know that you have to put an emergency exit light at the point of egress in a building. Putting lights on the other side of the emergency exit is also a good idea. Consider the following.

Every building should have its lighting systems inspected occasionally. It's important to keep an eye on your lighting as those fixtures and high-powered bulbs have potential to cause injury or even fire if they malfunction. 

Eventually, no matter how well you take care of your exit signs, you have to buy a new one for your building. Or perhaps you just bought a building that needs an exit sign to get up to code. Regardless of the circumstance, you will have several designs to choose from. Here are a few options that you might find.

Power outages have a way of clarifying gaps in a plan. In modern business, we plan for every possible contingency. We plan for competition, technological advances, and changes in the economy. We can plan for the changing seasons, but we can't plan for record-breaking storms. Connecticut, home to our headquarters, recently suffered from a significantly widespread power outage. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were blacked-out for days, some for over a week.

     You don't always get to choose ideal locations for your emergency lights. Sometimes circumstances force you to put your emergency lights in places that are regularly exposed to water. Perhaps the unit gets rain dripping on it, or it's placed where you hose down the walls. This puts the electrical components of your lights in peril. There are ways to prevent this, though. You only need to know the following things.   

    Your employees' safety matters to you, not only because you care about them, but because they are the source of your company's productivity. This is why you want your building's emergency exit lights to be the best that they can be. Here are a few tips for optimizing those life-saving lights.    

      Every business wants to know what OSHA standards apply to them because those rules give a good idea of what will keep employees and customers safe. For instance, the rule that every exit route must be clear of obstruction and that the exit door can't have decorations or signs that hide the door is a great guideline for ensuring that your exit is usable in an emergency situation. As you can imagine, OSHA saves a lot of their rules for how exit areas are illuminated, and you will want to keep abreast of their requirements. Fortunately, OSHA has written out some clear guidelines in this. The following questions are some that you, the business owner, need to ask.