Safety in Supermarkets

Safety in supermarkets is a multifaceted and capacious concept.

For shop owners, this is primarily a protection against theft of money and goods. In the next turn, the owners think about the safety of property in the event of accidents or natural disasters. The buildings are equipped with whole complexes of security systems, video surveillance, automatic detection and fire fighting, warning systems and evacuation control of people in case of fire, etc. In general, respectable owners are forced to spend heavily to bring their stores into a "protected" state and, they seem to have fulfilled all the requirements of the security laws, but ...

Imagine any familiar store, it's easier to have a grocery supermarket that you visit at least once or twice a week. Look around - do many windows with daylight surround you? That's right, in most cases - not one! It seems that the familiar and familiar route to the store for groceries and household trifles can be passed with your eyes closed. Can you guess what this is about?

So, an example. In our favorite and very familiar store, turn off the lights. Must turn on the emergency! But for some reason, everything is as usual. And now we finally have the opportunity to test ourselves and go with our eyes closed, try what we are capable of. We remember all the corners of this store better than its master and ready for anything! But! We are not with our eyes closed! We are in total darkness !!! For some reason, it is not possible to move calmly, other buyers begin to jostle and move restlessly about stumbling on food carts and bumping into goods located in evacuation aisles. With a growing wave in the crowd a panic is brewing and someone's hysterics and screams of children are bursting out.

Almost 99% of the visitors to the buildings as an escape route will use (strive for it) the path and the door that they used to get into the building. People will step on each other, forgetting not only that about propriety and some manners, but in general that they are people, thinking only of their own safety. And behind the back of the visitors there are a couple of absolutely free exits. The human flow on one, "familiar" exit will create such a cluster that it will be almost impossible to squeeze through it. Suffice it to recall your feelings in public transport in the rush hour, when you can easily pass the necessary stop, unable to squeeze through the crowd. Only here the crowd will be distraught and the size of a dozen buses or wagons and "drive" can be past their chance to survive. Unfortunately, fire extinguishing systems, fire alarms, warning and evacuation management are unlikely to help you, because there is no fire - there is only panic. Or the extinguishing system will work "perfectly" and extinguish the fire, but the crowd will continue to try to leave the building, not paying attention to anything.

Desperate situations do not happen. Sufficiently competent and weighed decision to date is the equipment of evacuation routes and evacuation exits by photoluminescent evacuation systems (FES). Special materials that can accumulate light from ambient light with daylight or artificial light, in full darkness, very clearly indicate by their glow all available evacuation routes from the room and evacuation exits. In practice, there is enough evidence of safe and timely evacuation of people from buildings and premises equipped with an FES, whereas even in training sessions with the lights off in the supermarket, people in the crowd began to get confused with the direction of movement and orientation in the building.

Unfortunately, such systems are not included in the list of the "mandatory" security suite of buildings. But any owner, thinking about the final level of security, including for his visitors, sooner or later will decide on the equipment of photoluminescent evacuation systems of their buildings. One of the advantages over competitors is that the owner of such, for example, supermarket will satisfy our primary needs not only in food, but also in safety, thereby making our store more attractive. After all, the buyer, knowing that in a building equipped with an FES is safer, in any case, next time will go exactly there.

Take care of yourself and your family!

Safety in supermarkets.