Honeywell Fire Alarm System Enhances Passenger and Employee Safety at St. Louis International Airport

With 14 million annual passengers and 756 daily arrivals and departures, Lambert is one of North America's top 25 busiest airports.

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport is ranked among the top 25 busiest airports in North America for aircraft operations and passengers. It has a significant $5.1 billion annual economic impact on the St. Louis region. The airport houses 10 major airlines, 15 commuter airlines, five on-site Air Cargo Airlines, and two major charter companies that use the 83 gates within the facility’s four concourses. In 2004, Lambert saw 14 million passengers, with approximately 756 average daily arrivals and departures.

The Lambert-St. Louis International Airport is a property that is also expanding rapidly. While the airport currently sits on approximately 2,162 acres of land, an additional 1,544 acres will be annexed through an expansion program that will be completed in 2006. It will be the largest capital improvement project in St. Louis history.

Business at Lambert-St. Louis international airport is thriving. Consequently, the airport is in the midst of a major upgrade to its fire alarm systems.

The systems are being provided by NOTIFIER, a Honeywell commercial fire alarm system. The decision to utilize NOTIFIER was not a difficult one. About five years ago, the East Terminal – constructed specifically for Southwest Airlines - was upgraded with two NOTIFIER intelligent fire alarm control systems and five Audio Command Centers installed and networked over fiber optic cable. Technologically, these systems were a quantum leap over the hard-wired systems that were previously in place and provided a level of control that airport management had never seen before in its fire protection equipment.

Leroy Ginther, project manager for Tech Electronics, the company handling the airport upgrades, said the main catalyst for the enhancements was increased control.

“With the airport expansion in the offing, there would be more territory to protect and a need to respond to emergencies more quickly and effectively,” Ginther said. “Management knew the technology of its older systems would be insufficient to meet those needs. They wanted intelligent systems with PC graphical workstations to visually identify the source of a fire.”

Now, with this most recent improvement, both the East Terminal and the Main Terminal will be protected with a NOTI-FIRE-NET intelligent fire alarm network system, creating a networked fire alarm system with 43 nodes.

The emergency voice evacuation system will communicate over the fire alarm system’s speakers, and will eventually be integrated into the airport’s general paging system (also installed by Tech Electronics). The control that this new system will afford airport management cannot be overstated. The concourses are divided into zones; consequently, if something happens in D concourse, only that concourse will receive a page, and only the specific part of the concourse area that is affected will be evacuated.

The NOTI•FIRE•NET intelligent fire alarm network links multiple NOTIFIER intelligent fire alarm control panels together as one, providing network-wide cooperative control and monitoring throughout the entire airport. Each fire alarm panel on NOTI•FIRE•NET maintains individual programming and continues to operate independently, yet cohesively, as part of a unified network. This prevents the loss of a single node from compromising other panels. The result is improved system survivability. NOTI-FIRE-NET grows and expands as the needs of the facility increase, making it ideal for upgrades, retrofits and multi-phase installation projects such as Lambert-St. Louis Int’l Airport.

The graphics on the systems are a welcome feature, according to Ginther. “We are putting CAD drawings of the building on the NCS so that airport personnel can graphically see the outlines of the building,” he said. “With these graphics, personnel will be able to see the exact component that is producing the alarm.”

The ability of the system to detect false alarms is also critical, and that’s where NOTIFIER’s ONYX Intelligent Sensing comes into play. A restaurant may accidentally set off an alarm in a cooking mishap, but by using ONYX Intelligent Sensing software algorithms found in all NOTIFIER fire alarm control panels, the system can quickly determine whether it is a real emergency or simply a burnt meal.

Ginther addressed the issue of adequate fire protection in a unique facility like an airport.

“Think about the overwhelming number of people who are being processed at any one time in an airport,” he said. “Think about all of the security stations, all of the concourses, the long lines, people waiting for flights, people in restrooms. And then there are the employees to consider as well. A successful evacuation procedure must be carefully coordinated and executed with the utmost precision to ensure maximum safety.

“That’s why the NOTIFIER systems at Lambert are so important. It’s not only critical to be able to quickly identify the source of a fire, but also to be able to distinguish a false alarm from the real thing. In a real emergency, it is also essential to have control over the situation, so that only the people who are potentially affected by the fire are alerted.”

Without question, the NOTIFIER systems are protecting Lambert’s passengers and employees.

For more information on NOTIFIER systems, visit http://www.notifier.com/home.htm