When the alarm sounds

A calamity is the moment everyone must be accounted for.

A calamity is any event that stops a site and asks one question that must be answered with certainty: who is inside the building right now? A fire, a gas leak, a lockdown, an evacuation drill. On paper, the answer is a binder at a gate nobody is allowed to walk back to.

Both terminals already hold the answer: everyone checked in and not yet out, visitors and staff and collectors alike. On battery, the device walks out to the assembly point as the live roll call: tick people off as they stand in front of you, and what remains on the screen is exactly who is still missing. No shouting names off a printout, no guessing who left early.

The alarm: counted by name A school with two rooms and six children inside. Class 2B is off site on a bus at the zoo and is not part of the count. The bell rings. The teacher walks out with the handheld to the assembly point. Five children come out one by one and wave at the reader in passing, and each name goes green. One name stays open and is shown large: Zara, still inside. She comes out, waves, six of six, and both rooms are marked Evacuated. Class 1AClass 3C EvacuatedEvacuated Assembly point 0 of 6 1 of 6 2 of 6 3 of 6 4 of 6 5 of 6 6 of 6 roll call Noah Hana Maya Yusuf Leo Zara 5 of 6Zarastill insideClass 3C Off siteClass 2B, at the zoo 1 The alarm 2 Counted by name 3 Nobody inside
The alarm at a school. Class 2B is at the zoo: Off site, and not chased. Everyone else is counted by name at the assembly point. One name stays on the screen until she walks out, and then both rooms read Evacuated.

You tick the places, once

Every place on your site is either swept in an alarm or it is not: the building and its classrooms are, the zoo and the bus are not. One place is the assembly point. That is set up on a quiet day. When the alarm sounds the list is already right, and the person holding the device can still change it, because in a fire the person there decides.

Evacuated, Assembly point, Off site

Three words, the same on every screen. A class at the zoo is Off site and is not chased. Everyone else is on the list until they stand in front of you at the Assembly point. A place is Evacuated when nobody is left in it.

A dropped handheld is not a lost roll call

Every device holds the whole register, so whichever one is nearest the door can start the roll call. If the app is closed or the device restarts, it reopens on the same roll call with the same people already counted. A fire alarm during a bus boarding is two counts, and both stay open.

The drill is the record you are asked for

A drill runs exactly like the real thing and leaves the same sealed record: which places, when it started, when it ended, who ran it, and every person with the minute they were accounted for. Asked how the last evacuation went, you open it.

The choice every site has

Spend your people's time and energy proving everyone is safe and every rule was followed: head-counts, binders, photocopies, filing. Or let our hardware and software do it for them: the record builds itself at the gate, the roll call carries itself out of the building, and your staff attend to people instead of paperwork.

Accounted for, greatly simplified

One glance answers how many, the screen answers who, and the stored photograph answers whether this is them. The roll call is the same sealed register the site runs on all day, not a second system that somebody forgot to update.

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