Emergency Lighting

Historical Moment: The 2005 Shantou Hotel Fire

A fire engulfed the Huanan Hotel in Shantou on June 10, 2005. It killed 31 people, and left 21 injured of which four were seriously injured. Authorities describe it as one of the worst blazes in the China’s southern Guangdong province since 1994.

According to an investigation report, the disaster was caused by sparks from the electric wires on the ceiling in a room on the second floor, kindling the combustible goods nearby.

The blaze broke out shortly after noon at the hotel located in a downtown district of Shantou city. The fire engulfed the top three floors of the four-story hotel at a trade center in the downtown area.

“Many rooms were gutted,” said an officer on duty at the Chaonan district fire brigade, who refused to give any further details. Firefighters put out the fire in three hours. It is unclear how many people were in the hotel at the time of the fire.

Guangdong governor Huang Huahua was quoted as saying by the Nanfang Daily newspaper, “The incident on June 10 was the most serious fire accident in our province in recent years. This lesson of blood serves as a reminder that we cannot be complacent over work safety issues.”
It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.
UDEC’s Featured Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: Open Reflector Type Area Light

The UDEC Open Reflector Type Area Lightprovides evenly distributed illumination for energy conservation, night/security and emergency lighting. Model 8R and 14R Series.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: The 1908 Collinwood School Fire

The Collinwood School Fire of Collinwood Ohio, also known as the Lakeview Elementary School Fire, occurred March 4, 1908, killing 172 students, two teachers and a rescuer. It was one of the deadliest disasters of its type in the United States during its era

The fire began shortly after 9 a.m. when a wooden joist caught fire when it was overheated by a steam pipe. The building’s main stair case extended from the front doors of the building and up to the third floor, which caused the stairwell to act like a chimney, helping the fire to spread quickly. Oiled wooden hall and classroom floors also fueled the fire.

At first, it was thought the rear doors of the school opened inward and the children could not open them because they were jammed against the doors by the other panic-stricken children pushing from behind.

But a physical examination of the building later proved that the outer doors did open outward. The doors to the building were equipped with common door knob latches, not the more modern crash bar type latch. The report on the fire concluded that the children’s failure to escape resulted from their own panic.

Besides panic leading to the crush of a large number of students in stairwell vestibules, students also died as a result of smoke inhalation and the fire itself. Some children died jumping from second and third story windows.

Fleeing children also became wedged tightly on the stairs behind a set of inner vestibule doors that were narrower than the outer doors. Community members watched as victims trapped in the building were burned beyond recognition.

Those killed in the fire that could not be identified, or students whose parents could not afford a burial were buried in a mass grave in Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery.

The remains of the Lake View School were demolished and a memorial garden planned for the site. A new school, Collinwood Memorial Elementary School (razed in 2004) was later built adjacent to the disaster site.

This tragedy led to numerous school inspections across the country, which resulted in stricter laws; one being that “panic bar” latches are required on outer school doors.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

Udec’s Featured Emergency Lighting Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: 914 Flatpack Automatic Relamping Area Light.

UDEC’s 914 Flatpack contains nine 14-watt miniature fluorescent tubes secured with plastic end pieces. When energized by the UDEC ballast, only one tube will operate. When one fails another ignites, until all nine have eventually failed. Built-in light sensors prevent any lamp from burning if ambient light is present.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. Udec Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: 2006 Tennessee Clothes Dryer Fire

Two women, one handicapped, died in a fire when the clothes dryer in their rented single-family home malfunctioned. The wood-frame house, which had an asphalt roof, was not sprinklered.

One of the women awoke around 8:30 a.m. to the smell of smoke and telephoned the fire department. The fire had spread up a wall, across the ceiling, and up an open stairwell to the attic, where it traveled the length of the house above the living areas.

The handicapped woman died at the scene. The other woman suffered burns and smoke inhalation when she tried to rescue her roommate and died at the hospital. The house and its contents were completely destroyed.

After the fire was extinguished, investigators determined that the clothes dryer’s motor malfunctioned, causing clothing and carpeting to overheat and ignite.

One of the most common causes of home fires is clothes dryers, usually because of improper care. “Failure to clean” is the leading factor contributing to clothes-dryer fires in residential building. Below are suggested home safety tips for your clothes dryer.

• Never put synthetic materials such as rubber, plastic, foam, or pieces of cloth that have been used to sponge up flammable liquids in the dryer, even if previously washed.
• Clean the lint out of the exhaust pipe and the rear of the dryer regularly.
• Inspect your lint filter for rips each time you use it. If you see any rips, replace immediately.
• The exhaust pipe should be as short as possible and have limited bends to allow for adequate airflow.

Most home fires happen at night or when people are asleep; emergency lighting or lighting strips can make the difference when you awake, groggy and confused, and need to act quickly in a bad situation. Sprinklers and smoke detectors are a great start to home safety, but emergency lighting can make the difference in helping your family tosafety.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. Udec Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

Udec’s Featured Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: Fluorescent Diffuser Type Area Light
The UDEC Diffuser Type Area Light provides evenly distributed illumination for energy conservation, night/security and emergency lighting.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. Udec Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: The 1998 Yaoundé train explosion

A rail accident in Yaoundé, the capital of the central African state Cameroon, on February 14th, led to the catastrophic destruction of a tanker train hauling fuel where 120 were left dead and 150 seriously injured.

A train of oil tankers derailed when it was in collided with a train, also pulling oil tanker wagons, traveling in the opposite direction. Petroleum began to spill form the ruptured tankers.

A large number of local people and passing taxi drivers stopped to collect the fuel oil in containers, their clothes becoming saturated in the process. Petrol commands a premium in the country and it is common for the fuel to be sold from the side of the road, often in open containers.

The belief of what happened next is that one of the local people at the crash sight was smoking. When he stooped to collect some of the oil, he accidentally dropped the lit cigarette creating a flash fire. The fire traveled right back to the wrecked tankers, creating a massive fireball, killing almost all the people in the area, as well as flattening local slum housing and starting numerous smaller fires in the surrounding districts.

The emergency services arrived on the scene soon after the blaze started, but were held back by the force of the flames for a long time, which they were only able to contain, not extinguish. The fire burned for several hours. For days, a column of black smoke hung over the area of the blast.

The cause of the train collision is not known, but most assume it had something to do with poor equipment and maintenance on the rail system due to Cameroon’s prevalent corruption. Cameroon was labelled “most corrupt nation 1998″ by Transparency International- a leading international non-governmental organization addressing corruption.

Railway services to the south of the country were out of action for weeks, dealing yet another blow to Cameroon’s oil industry.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives.
UDEC’s Featured Product: Fluorescent Diffuser Type Area Light
The UDEC Diffuser Type Area Light provides evenly distributed illumination for energy conservation, night/security and emergency lighting.

UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: 1996 Rockefeller Center High Rise Fire

A predawn fire broke out one early fall morning at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Several fires broke out in five different remote locations, filling much of the building with smoke. Since the fire had occurred early in the morning, there were few people in the building, fortunately, and everyone was able to evacuate successfully with no loss of life and minimal injuries.

The New York City Fire Department received a telephone report of the fire and dispatched a full first alarm assignment. When the fire fighters arrived, they could see smoke coming from one of the upper floors of the building. However, according to the first arriving command officer, the on-site building security staff was not even aware of any fire condition within the building, nor were there any alarms indicated on the fire alarm system.

Fire fighters who entered the building received reports from civilians of fire on floors 7 through 10. It was later determined that there were fires in five separate electrical rooms. The fire department ultimately transmitted five alarms, bringing approximately 300 fire fighters to the scene.

In spite of the large amount of resources, the fire had become so deeply entrenched in the electrical wiring system in the five separate electrical rooms on several floors that it took fire fighters over four hours to extinguish the fire.

The building had many safety hazards listed against it. Such as, the lack of smoke detection in the areas of the fire, the lack of sprinkler protection in the same area, and the failure of the building fire alarm system to transmit the alarm. In spite of the severity of such fire hazards and due to the timing of the fire, only five civilians and 12 fire fighters were injured.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Integrated Night & Emergency Light Module for Corridor Troffers

The Model 14WEN is a 14-watt fluorescent lamp assembly retrofit. It provides emergency illumination when AC power fails and provides night lighting when corridor lights are switched off.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The 1971 Ibrox Football Stadium Disaster

THe 1971 Ibrox disaster is listed as one of the blackest days in Scottish football history attended by a crowd of 80,000 football fans. The tragedy resulted in the loss of 66 lives with another 145 other fans injured. Among the dead were 31 teenagers, and four schoolboy pals from the small town of Markinch in Fife, who never returned from the game alive.

The disaster occurred when crush barriers collapsed on the stairway adjacent to passageway 13 as thousands of fans were leaving the Ibrox Park stadium in Glasgow on Jan 2, 1977. The collapse created a smothering chain-reaction pile-up of the crowd. Bodies were found stacked as deep as six feet in the area.

It was at the end of a Rangers versus Celtic game and after 89 minutes of scoreless football, Celtic took a 1-0 lead and many Rangers supporters left the stadium. However, in the last seconds of stoppage time, Colin Stein scored an equalizer for Rangers.

An untrue report circulated for years that fan who were leaving the grounds, came back and met a wave of jubilant fans coming in the opposite direction, but that has been proven untrue. All were heading in the same direction when the crush took place halfway down Stairway 13.

The Ibrox disaster led to a huge redevelopment of Ibrox Park and is a testament to those who died. A plaque and a statue of the Rangers captain at the time of the disaster commemorates the scene where the tragedy occurred.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: Decorative Area Light for Office

UDEC Ultra-Thin office decor area lights are specifically designed to attractively compliment any setting. They can easily be mounted on wall or ceiling for optimum style and lighting.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: Fraser Pier Fire (Ocean Park, CA)

A fire broke out at Fraser’s Million Dollar Pier in Ocean Park on September 3, 1912.

The fire started by someone carelessly tossing a smoldering cigarette in some bedding in the Japanese servants’ quarters in the basement. A strong late afternoon breeze fanned the flames and within minutes cries of “Fire!” came from a dozen different directions.

Sparks, leaping two hundred feet high, showered down like a fiery bath over the flimsy paint canvas and light wooden grill that adorned the pier’s attractions. Over a thousand visitors were still on the pier heading for the two main exits when the Skating Rink caught fire, blocking one of the exits. 

Fire companies’ efforts amounted to a few puny streams of water until Venice’s high pressure system was used. The Los Angeles Fire Companies speedy arrival only 27 minutes later did little to control the blaze.

Panic on the pier erupted. People, including owner Fraser and his young son, reached the docks and escaped by boat. Other’s leapt into the sea.
 
The fire totally destroyed the pier, all the amusements and five square blocks of the business district. All 225 structures burned, two people died, several were missing, 75 people were injured and 800 people were homeless. The loss was set at $2,000,000 with little of it insured.
 
It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most. 

UDEC’s Featured Product: Emergency Lighting Fixtures Accessories: Fluorescent Emergency Lighting Ballasts

The BAL fluorescent emergency Ballast allows the same fixture to be used for both normal and emergency operation.

In the event of a power failure, the BAL switches to the emergency mode and operates one or two of the existing lamps for a minimum of 90 minutes.

The unit contains a battery, charger and inverter circuit in a single package. The BAL can be mounted in the wireway or on top of the fixture, and is UL Listed for factory installation or retrofit applications.

All Ballasts are Standard with Dual 120/277 Volt Input.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful and unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The Station Nightclub Fire

The Station Nightclub Fire on February 20, 2003, was the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. The Station, which regularly hosted glam metal and ’80s rock bands, was a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. 

The fire started around 11:08 p.m., when pyrotechnics, set off by the headlining band’s, Great White, manager lit flammable sounding proofing foam behind the set. People thought at first the fire to be part of the act. Only when the fire reached the ceiling and smoke began to billow did people realize it was uncontrolled.

Just 20 seconds after the pyrotechnics ended, the band stopped playing, and lead singer, Jack Russell, remarked into the microphone, “Wow… this ain’t good.” 

In less than a minute, the entire stage was engulfed in flames. Although there were four possible exits, most people headed for the door through which they entered. 

The ensuing stampede in the inferno led to a crush in the narrow hallway leading to that main entrance, eventually blocking it completely and resulting in numerous deaths and injuries among the patrons and staff, who numbered somewhat more than 404 - although there are conflicting official capacity limits. 

Of those in attendance, 100 people died and over 200 were injured, either from burns, smoke inhalation or trampling.  Among those who perished in the fire was Great White’s lead guitarist, Ty Longley.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.  

UDEC’s Featured Product: Model UR-1 Emergency Lighting Unit

Emergency and economical unit with “EZ” install back plate feature. Modern appearance and low maintenance.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful and unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.  

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The Accra Sports Stadium Disaster

The 2001 Accra Sports Stadium disaster took place in Accra, Ghana, taking the lives of 127 people.
 
It occurred during a match between Ghana’s two most successful football teams, Accra Hearts of Oak Sporting Club and Asante Kotoko. In a close defeat, the disappointed, defeated Kotoko fans hurled plastic seats and bottles onto the pitch.
 
The response to this crowd disturbance from the police was to fire tear gas into the crowd. Panic erupted and a resulting stampede led to the crushing of 127 people.
 
Reports claim that gates were locked, preventing escape, and that the medical staff had already left the stadium. Six police officers were charge with 127 charges of manslaughter.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most. 
 
UDEC’s Product Feature: Emergency Lighting System
 
 Model SL900-TD14 UDEC Athletic Field Emergency Egress Lighting System is an emergency egress lighting system designed for athletic fields and other outdoor areas.

It makes use of the latest technology in fluorescent material, which produces 50% more light than conventional fluorescent lights. Each system contains (8) lamps operated on a high frequency electronic ballast and will illuminate 15,000 square feet to an average of 0.5 foot candle.
 
Two SL900-TD14 systems, one at each opposite end of an athletic field bleacher, will illuminate the area to an average of 1.0 foot candle during power outages. Upon power resumption the unit stays on 14 minutes to allow restrike of high intensity discharge lamps.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful and unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Most of the public service vehicles have in them good emergency lighting installed to be able to serve people better. In police cars and ambulances, that is why the light is fixed along with a siren and in colors of blue, red and yellow, so they will be noticed and people can easily identify them. These lights have back up system installed for they will need to function at odd hours and in case of an emergency will be called upon to save lives. Since these vehicles are approached to avert trouble or save lives, they will have to be given unique lighting to distinguish them from other vehicles and enable them to reach the location in shortest period of time.

So, today when we see an ambulance or police patrol car, we know it based on the lights swirling on the roof and if the siren is playing, it is a sign that we need to make way for them. This is also a form of emergency lighting and is utilized by the public service department in all countries. The lights here need to be functional and efficient and so the lights are long lasting with minimum maintenance required.