Welcome to Warden Training for La Trobe University. For today's training, we'll be going through the different fire systems across the buildings at all of our campuses, the buildings across the university of different vintages and types. And the systems are not all going to be the same. So we might not cover exactly what's in your building, but we will go through some things that are common across all the buildings. We'll talk briefly about some emergency incidents we've had at La Trobe, and we'll talk about the evacuation process and assembly areas. We will cover off the roles of both the facility and the area warden in the case of an emergency and some other information for you. If you have a question during the session, please click on the Contact Us tile at the base of your screen and one of the team will respond to your question via e-mail. You'll be required to undertake a test during the session and you'll be able to download your certificate after the session has been completed. We have included a resource list with some handy links for you to access regarding Emergency Management at La Trobe. So emergencies are defined as any event, whether they are naturally occurring or artificial, accidental or deliberately started, which puts the safety of our staff, students, visitors, contractors at risk and requires a response from the building occupants. Please note that emergencies don't always occur within the building. We may have to respond even if it is an an external emergency. But today we're mainly focusing on fire evacuations. These roles also cover medical emergencies, gas leaks, chemical spills, bomb threats, storms or flooding, civil disturbances and or protests. So you may be involved in an emergency response other than a fire evacuation, but it really depends on the situation and we generally take direction from both security and the attending emergency services at the time. But please know that today we are mainly talking about fire and evacuation. So we have some emergency procedures that are found on the La Trobe University emergency web page and the link is located in the resource list for you. If you click on the emergency procedures tile and each of the response codes will be listed, giving you the quick steps as to what response each code requires. We follow the code system as per the Australian standards. This information is publicly available because it's for staff, students, visitors, contractors and the like to access and it just breaks down each emergency step by step. So it's not just for wardens, it's for everyone to know exactly what to do if they hear the building emergency system say evacuate. Now. The codes listed on the web page are Code Brown for an external emergency, Code Red for fire or smoke, Code Blue for medical emergency or first aid, Code Yellow for a gas leak or a chemical spill, Code Orange for evacuation, Code Purple for a bomb, chemical or biological threat, Code Black is for a personal threat, Code White is for a major disruption or outage incident, and Code Green is for a data breach or cyber incident. There are a number of fire systems across the university, the most obvious one being the alarms for each of the buildings. Most of our buildings across all of our campuses have both internal and external alarms, and because of the nature of being a university in a physically large area, there are lots of buildings on campus that the fire ease or attending emergency services need to know exactly where to go in the event of an emergency. The alarms assist with this process. During an emergency, you'll hear the external bells go off as well as internal tones. Some buildings will have alarm bells and others will have a voice over saying emergency evacuate now. I'll play some of the samples now. Emergency evacuate now. Evacuate the building using the nearest fire. So those are some of the alarms that you'll hear in our buildings across our canvases when there's an emergency. There are a range of detectors across all the different buildings, mainly thermal and smoke detectors, and when you're on campus next you can have a look around and you'll be able to see what's in your area. Thermal detectors are intended to minimise property damage by reacting to the change in temperature caused by a fire. Smoke detectors are intended to protect people and property by generating an alarm earlier in the development of a fire. People need time to react and every second is critical during an actual fire event. Manual call points, or break glass alarms as they were previously known, are designed to provide a manual interface for raising an alarm on the fire alarm system. This is the red one pushing the glass. It fractures safely or drops down to release the switch. Internal electronics immediately notify the fire alarm control panel of the activation. The manual call point can be used in the unlikely event a detector doesn't pick up the fire or smoke. The red coloured manual call points. A labeled fire or fire alarm allow the occupants to activate the building's fire detection system. Activate the fire detection system can also trigger the automatic operation of the emergency warning and into communication system. The E whis panel. The emergency call point. This is the white version of the bright glass alarm. The emergency call point activates the alarm system but does not alert the security control room or the fire brigade. It's used for any emergency other than a fire, for example a bomb threat. White coloured emergency call points labeled emergency alarm allow the occupants to activate the building's emergency warning and intercommunication system. Sprinklers are not in all areas because of the type or amount of electrical equipment they might have in some of the facilities. A number of our labs wouldn't have sprinklers because of the nature of the equipment and the activities that occur in those areas. In IT server rooms, we've got gas and powder and those sorts of suppressants instead. So please don't be alarmed if you don't see any sprinklers around. The main systems we're going to discuss today are the two panels that we've got in most of our buildings, our fire indicator panel and the E Whis panel, which stands for emergency warning and into communication system. These panels are located generally on the ground floor near 1 of the exits. So if after this you want to go and have a wander around, you can go and look for where your panel is located on your campus. But not all buildings have both the fire indicator panel and the E whiz panel. A single Storey building, for example, the John Scott Meetinghouse at the Bundoora campus. A number of the buildings on our Albury Wodonga campus where it is a small building where everyone is fairly well connected. Well, they wouldn't have an E whiz panel because there aren't the communication challenges of multiple floors and wardens are going to be able to quickly communicate with each other verbally. A building such as limbs one, they will definitely have an E Wiz panel as well as a warden on every level. So the E Wiz panel generally located with or near the fire panel on the ground floor. And as its name suggests, its main function is communication. The facility Warden, security and attending emergency services can access this panel and use it to communicate with the area wardens on each floor. The red phone at the EWIS panel is connected to every red phone located throughout the building. So if you've got an area Warden and in the building on Level 3, they can call through to the facility Warden on the ground floor and let them know when their area has been evacuated. The facility Warden can then mark off using the coloured buttons on the on the panel when an area has been cleared so that they can keep track of the evacuation process. We can arrange on site training to use this EWIS panel for facility wardens and area wardens. The phones are two way so when the facility warden can call from the ground floor to the area warden on Level 3. The black handset is for our public address system so that the facility warden or emergency services can send a message out to the whole building or to individual areas. When we have organised the on site walkthrough we will provide training on how to use the EWIS panel. Our contractors from Wormald will help with any of our wardens to become more familiar with the panel, covering the basics on how to operate it and how to use it during an emergency. The manual alerts and evacuation tones can also be turned on for a specific area dependent on the emergency, and these functions are used during our evacuation drills. For the Fire Indicator Panel, or FIP, this is generally located with or near the EWIS panel, as always on the ground floor, generally near an exit. The main function of this panel is to let us exactly know what is going on during an emergency and where the emergency is located in the building. As you can see there on the screen from all the little labels and dots, it has the whole building broken up into different zones and each zone corresponds to a particular area of the building and a particular detector. When there is an emergency, the facility warden, security and emergency services know exactly what's going on when they look at the panel and see which lights are on. Some of these panels can also centrally shut down the air conditioning. When the fire panel activates, it opens up any auto doors at the Bundura campus. The FIP is linked to the main fire indicator panel for the campus at the security gatehouse. Wormwood are currently working on a system that will connect all the fire indicator panels across all campuses to a central system that will alert them to any activated fire panel on any of the campuses. The fire indicator panel is connected directly to the brigade and once any panels on campus activate, an alert goes through to the fire station. When the emergency services arrive on campus, this is exactly where security plays a key role because security will direct the fire department as to where to go. They will also escort them through our campuses. So all we need to do, especially as a facility warden when the alarms go off, is to head down to the panel and just look at which detector is activated so we know where the emergency is located. The rest of the area wardens, you can just focus on evacuating the people in the building. Some of the other fire system features we have across the campuses are the firefighting equipment and you will find that we have fire extinguishers and fire blankets as well as fire hose reels and hydrants. Dependent on the risk and the facilities in some departments, some areas will provide fire extinguisher training themselves. An example of an area is the chemistry department, because they do have a lot of little fires that they will prefer to extinguish themselves. They're always working with a lot of reactive chemicals and a lot of bunts and burners and that sort of thing. So they do train their staff with fire extinguishers. For everyone else, we'd prefer everyone just left the building. Our job is not to fight the fires. We'll leave that up to the professionals. Our role and that of the wardens is just to get people out as quickly and as calmly as possible. Smoke doors activate upon the alarms going off through the fire panel and they will close and they are fire resistant. If it is not a large fire coming through the building, the smoke doors will help stop the immediate spread and give the fire ease enough time to extinguish it. The same goes with fire isolated stairwells. Again, they're made of fire resistant materials and if we need to move anyone who has a mobility impairment, we would move them beyond the smoke doors and into the fire isolated stairwells. Finally, the emergency exits and emergency lighting. They're pretty self-explanatory, but the emergency lighting runs on backup power and will kick in if our main pay power goes out in the event of a fire. The emergency exit signs should be the running person sign. For the administrative systems we have at La Trobe, we have fire system information. We've got procedures for each emergency code and evacuation diagrams for every facility. The evacuation diagrams show you where all of the emergency equipment is located and where the exits are. Things like fire extinguishers, manual call points or break glass alarms, fire hose reels, fire hydrants, and the fire indicator panel are shown on this diagram. The evacuation diagram also shows you where your assembly area is and your evacuation route out of the building, shown by the green arrows at the bottom of the diagram there on the screen. Evacuation drills are something that also forms part of the administrative systems where we make sure we get it right during a practice rather than the real thing and are used to identify any issues or areas for improvement. But we'll talk about that a little bit later on. Incident reporting is another of our administrative systems. So if there is any sort of fire related or emergency related incident, whether you're directly involved or not, please report it through to our team. We need to know security and where we'll need to know about these incidents so that we can resolve any potential issues before an emergency and before it is too late. So we do have occasions of incidents at La Trobe University. We never know whether they're a false alarm or a real emergency. But whenever the alarm goes off, we do need to take it seriously and undertake our emergency procedures. Good chance to practice even if it is a false alarm. So number of false alarms, we tend to have some of the faults with the electrical systems in the panels and the detectors and then anything that gets into the, the smoke detectors. So steam and might be dust from building works, might be insects have entered the building or just a strong wind can blow dust into those detectors and the alarm goes off. But as I say, it's a really good chance to practice. Do take the, the alarm seriously, good chance to put on your hat, go and do your, your, your duties and evacuate thoroughly. And also good for the building occupants to have a, a practice as well. So I'd encourage you to do take those seriously and also any building occupants who are saying, is this a false alarm? Well, we don't know. It's business as usual means we evacuate. Now, we do do some evacuations, doing evacuation drills, but you must be aware that every time in an emergency, you're the one in charge of the whole building. The vice chancellor is not in charge. Any senior people in that building are not in charge. It's the wardens who are the people in charge. Our number one priority is to protect people. And we're not so worried about property. You know, overall, if the building burns down, we don't care that much. We just care that everyone's being evacuated safely and that no one's been hurt. So that's our number one priority now when we do the drills, once again, good chance to practice for everyone, good chance for the wardens to put on their hats, do the thorough search and for the building occupants to do their their evacuation. Now evacuation drills are disruptive, but you have to do it. It's really is important that we practice these sort of things. A little tip here is that behaviour in an emergency, generally people are pretty calm. In an emergency. You wouldn't expect people to panic. The only time people panic is when their safety is directly in danger, if they're very close to the fire, for example. So we should expect people to behave pretty well during the evacuation. And also the warden, the warden that have a big role here. If the warden's very calm and you're the person in charge, then that will flow on to the other people. If the warden is panicking, well, the other people in the area are going to be prone to panicking as well. So be calm. Even if you don't feel calm, pretend to be calm, put on your hat, do your thorough evacuation and and things should go smoothly. Another tip is to not waste any time on any non compliant people you know. If someone's refusing to evacuate, well, you've got the whole rest of the building or the rest of the floor to worry about. So you should instruct that person that we are having an emergency. You must evacuate. Please head to the fire escape stairs and out to the evacuation area. Then don't waste any more time on them. When you end up finishing your search and you go to the fire panel, that's a chance to let the facility warden or security or the attending emergency services know that there was a certain person up in this area who refused to evacuate. So, so that's how to how to handle that sort of situation. Now it's really important to do the thorough search all areas, including toilets. So no matter what gender you are, you can just go into the, the toilets, knock on the door folks, it's the warden here, we're evacuating. Please finish what you're doing and make your way to the fire stairs. So do all that and all cupboard store rooms. You know, what you really want to do is to get down to the fire panel and be able to give a confident report that you've done a thorough search and everyone's been evacuated. So it's a good opportunity when you get back to your workplace, have a look around, work out what's the most logical way to do a a search of that area. What are all the little nooks and crannies? Where are the areas where you might miss someone if you weren't diligent? So, so a good way to re familiarize yourself with the workplace. Now we do have assembly areas in the in, in at the university. So the idea is there's often more than one emergency assembly area. So you don't have to stand in the smoke. Let's say your primary assembly area, there's smoke blowing that area. You don't have to stand there. We've got the secondary assembly area. You can move over everyone to to that area. So there's an option, you don't have to stand outside. If it's raining really strongly or there's a hailstorm, you've got the option to send them people into a nearby building where they'll still be safe. So if you aren't going to make any changes to this, try and get a message back to the fire brigade or the Chief Warden. Sorry, the facility warden security, let them know we're moving away from Assembly .1. We're moving into the library because it's raining cats and dogs outside. They're allowed to do that. We like the idea that people stay at the assembly point wherever it is. Staff, we might expect that they will follow orders. Students will. Students wander off, don't know. But as long as we've done that thorough search of the building, we're confident everyone's out. You know, it's very hard to keep track of where everyone is on our campuses because their buildings are open to all, you know, the public and to anyone. So the thorough search is the most effective way. An important one though is to stop people re entering the building. If there's an alarm going on, people really shouldn't be entering the building. So some of our places you might want to station a warden or another staff member at the doorway to stop people re entering and other areas have got their local local procedures for that as well. Now here's a little map of the different assembly points at our campuses. So Aubrey Wodong, you can see there's three, there's one just out the front of the library. But as we're saying, if there's any threat or any hazard or smoke blowing in that direction, we can move to the second secondary assembly area, which is at the back of the cafe there. And you can see the residents down the bottom left have have one assembly point there. Bendigo, this is quite a small map with lots of assembly points, so I won't go through them all, but a good opportunity when you're back in your workplace, just remind yourself where the assembly points are and where the other options for assembly might be. You'll have your evacuation diagrams on the walls around the buildings. Can have a look at their those and just have a bit of a think, how am I going to evacuate this building? Where can I get people to assemble? Especially if one assembly point is not not usable. Bandura is even bigger with with more more assembly points there, so same thing. Do a bit of familiarization where the nearby 1 is and where the secondary 1 is for for your building where you normally work. Mildura's got the two. There you go. If the one at the back on the left hand side there is got a problem, we can head out to the other one on the right hand side in the near the the road and Shepparton's only got the one but across the road from there there's another car park. So I've got an option to hurt everyone across the road. Now generally we want to keep people away from extra hazards so crossing roads if avoid that if possible. But Stewarts right there is a one way St. without not much traffic, so we can safely cross there if the primary assembly point is not suitable. Now folks, you roll the eyes and the ears of the health and safety team. So any problems with our emergency processes, please let us know. Or you can even go and fix it yourself or let us know. So any problems bring it to our attention. You might be asked to attend some meetings at different times, which is good. Please make sure you've got your your cap very handy to have the cap and we've got spares. So if you haven't lose yours or can't find it, please let us know. We'll find one for you. Very helpful. Because I'm a grumpy person. If some random person walks up to me and starts giving me orders, I might not follow their orders, but here's the person with the cap says warden on there. Oh, this is the person in charge. Perhaps I should follow what they say. So very handy for that and also for the security and the facility warden and the emergency services. I can say, oh, there's the person in the cap. They know what's going on. They'll go and talk to talk to you, get a briefing on what's happening. So very handy. The health and safety team have been putting a lot of work into getting more area wardens. We've got a few gaps in our our processes there, especially with lots of people working from home these days. So if you could help us out with this, if you could remind your staff to nominate to be a warden or let us know some people who you think might be good wardens, we'll help. We'll be happy to contact them. So we're still trying to fill in a few gaps there. Now, personal emergency evacuation plan is for a person who has disability. There's more information coming up on that, but you'll have a role in helping to put that together to make sure I've got safe evacuation for anyone with a disability. Report any deficiencies of emergency equipment. So what if there's a fire extinguisher missing? What if there's been some equipment parked in front of a fire extinguisher and blocking it off? Any of these sorts of things. You can either fix it yourself or let us know. We'll chase it up for you. So once again, you're the eyes and the ears of the health and safety team. Communication is a good one. So any meetings you have throughout the year, perhaps a number of times you can mention about emergencies, who's the wardens, where the assembly points are, what to do when the alarm sounds, that sort of thing. Be really helpful if you could raise some awareness around those sort of things. Drills. We're going to have some drills coming up during the year, so we'll ask you to participate. And at the end of each drill, we do a wrap up. We have a little meeting at the end. What went well, what could have gone better? So please, good chance to practice. All right, lucky last. Yeah, this is all just about raising awareness. So yeah, if you could do a bit of communication for us, that would be great. Now any inspections, right, if we find any build up of combustible materials, old boxes or anything that's becoming a fire hazard, well that would be great if you could organize to get those removed or if any problems, let us know and we'll chase that for you. So please be aware of that one. Once the alarms go off, the facility warden hears the alert and evacuation tone, so they know it's not a drill. The first thing they do is grab their yellow hat and go to the fire indicator panel. Within minutes, we should have security and emergency services attending the panel as well. The response times are generally very quick. Once at the panel, you try and see if you can identify which area is an alarm and relay that information to the fire brigade or security. You'll remain at the panel and wait for area wardens to report to you that they've clear the floors. They may do so via the red phones. So if a warden picks up the red phone, it'll ring to the EWIS panel and the facility warden can answer that phone and the area warden will report they've clear the floor and everyone is out and that will happen for each of the floors. Once the facility warden knows that each floor has been marked off, they let security emergency services know that the building is clear and then the brigade can enter if they haven't done so already. The facility warden also assisting liaises both with both security and emergency services for anything else they may need and if everything is OK, they can evacuate with everyone else as well. So if the facility warden is not at the building at the time when the alarm or when the emergency is happening, as we are still working flexibly at the moment, security will respond to all the emergencies and evacuations on campus. And our team have been working closely with Ino and the security guards to make sure that they are fully trained in the exact same session as we are running now. So security have an idea of what their responsibilities are in the event of an emergency that they are responding to. And they will take on the role of facility warden and direct area wards as required, as well as liaise with emergency services. Once the sirens go off, the area warden go to the designated area and start clearing the floors. In areas that we have specific machinery like our labs, engineering workshops, we need to ensure that everything is safe. So for example, we don't leave buns and burners on or cutting machines and grinding machines going. We make sure everything is turned off, left in a safe manner and ensure everyone is evacuated to the nearest emergency exit as well as the assembly areas, so then you can start sweeping the floors and include areas such as meeting rooms, student rooms, toilets and kitchens. If anyone who's refusing to leave, we just let security and emergency services know and they will be able to assist. Once the floors are cleared, we liaise with the other wardens and head down to the panel and let them know that your floor is clear or you relay that message via the red phone and then you can evacuate with everyone else as well. People with a disability or mobility impairments, we recommend as, as is also stipulated in the Australian Standard, that we ensure their safety by moving them into the fire. Isolated stairwells. We don't expect anyone to carry a person down the stairs. It is not safe. The brigade are trained to do that and rarely do it as well. If it's a real threat to life, they should take that responsibility on and have special equipment that they would use as well in that instance. During the evacuation drills, we don't expect people with a disability or mobility impairment to evacuate. They can just stay where they are. But during a real emergency, we need to ensure that they are moved to the fire isolated stairwells. Some staff and students are hearing impaired and we have special lighting in place that flashes during an emergency that they will recognize. We also have those arrangements in areas such as the Animal House to ensure the animals don't get alarmed with loud noises. The Personal Emergency Evacuation plan is there to let us know that there might be someone who needs additional assistance during an emergency. We share this information with the facility warden and to let them know that there might be someone in the building that will require additional assistance. The form is also available on the Internet. Post emergency will require you to conduct a debrief with both security and sometimes emergency services, but generally with security and wardens only. There's also a report that we ask facility wardens to be complete and we do this evacuation draws as well. We discussed things that went well and if things don't go well and the post emergency, during the post emergency brief, we get them record fight accordingly. Security will be in the area very quickly as they are monitoring the campus day and night. The response times are very quick to most of the campuses, so all buried. Donga, the nearest CFA station is about 150 meters from campus. Bandura is less than two kilometers. Bendigo is about 3.5 kilometers from campus. Mildura 2.3 in Shepparton, 1 kilometer from the campus. Other roles that security are involved in our assisting emergency response and attending evacuation drills. Additionally, security will take on the role as facility warden if the facility warden is not on site and the area warden will take direction from security in that instance. We're mold are our fire systems contractors and then maintain our fire systems on all campuses now. Previously we've had different contractors taking on that responsibility. It is all done through the same contractor. Now additionally, we're molds also maintain and test fire systems across university and replenish and used fire extinguishers, schedule drills with our team, attend drills and provide feedback to wardens and provide fire panel and E was training to all wardens as well. So just to summarize today's session, it is important to be aware of your working environment and emergency information and where it's located. If you have any new starters, it is important to brief them on what to do in case of an emergency and where their nearest exits are, as well as the evacuation diagrams. It's also important to report any fire hazards and incidents through to our team. Ensure everyone is aware of their role in an emergency, so in that which includes staff, students, visitors and contractors. Thanks for undertaking your training today and thank you for volunteering your time to be a facility or area warden. Please reach out to the Health and Safety Team to organise a time on site to go through the practical components of your building or area. In the meantime, please have a look at your evacuation diagrams, find your fire indicator panel, your EOS panel, your BIP phones and emergency assembly points. Have a think about how you might evacuate your space in the event of an emergency. Please remember to take the test so that we can certify that you have completed your training. You can download the certificate from the certification tile at the bottom of your screen. Included in the resource list is a link to the current Warden and First Aid Responder registers. Please check your areas for any vacancies and encourage your colleagues to volunteer.