Life Safety Solutions for the Corrections Industry

• Intentional lighting of clothing, mattresses and trash
• Faults with electrical equipment
• Cigarette smoking in cells

• Vandalism - Detectors that are visible and accessible invite vandalism and tampering
• Maintenance - Accessing secure and restricted areas to test and maintain detectors is costly and challenging
• Nuisance Alarms - Dust, dirt or other airborne contaminants affect detector reliability and performance
• Dilution - Smoke tends to dilute in large open spaces, challenging the poor sensitivity of conventional spot-type detectors
• Evacuation - Orchestrating a controlled and secure evacuation during a fire event requires sufficient time and planning
• 
  Monitoring - Obtaining accurate and useful information about smoke levels can be a challenge
• Stratification - In areas with high ceilings smoke can stratify and fail to reach conventional detectors
• Tenability and Egress - meeting the tenability and smoke control requirements of International Building Code (IBC

Vandalism

• Traditional smoke detection systems within cells, although covered with mesh, leave themselves open to vandalism
• A VESDA system has the option to use a tamper-proof sampling point, reporting fault if it becomes blocked

VESDA detectors buy time. Time to respond to a fire threat, minimizing damage and maximizing the time available for a safe and orderly evacuation.

The key advantages are:

• Tamper-proof sampling points which deter vandalism
• Sampling pipe can be located behind vents, invisible to inmates
• The ability to locate sampling holes where smoke will travel and to position the detector in a location that has easy access for maintenance
• The high sensitivity range of a VESDA detector allows alarm thresholds to be set for the earliest possible warning of a fire in a large open space
• Multiple configurable alarms provide, for example, very early warning allowing time for investigation, security management and subsequent warnings to initiate automated fire department notification, evacuation and suppression
• Remote monitoring and configuration of detectors improves control and cost of ownership in unmanned or secured areas
• VESDA systems maintain an event log which allows analysis of smoke and detector response trends for forensic incident analysis