A night fire watch of two patrollers on 2-hour shifts over a 10-hour night needs 10 people a night, which is one night in ten for a settlement of 100 adults. The alarm must be loud, different from the security alert and sounded from several points, because the sound of a bell at 150 m is 14 dB weaker than at 30 m and walls weaken it further.
Part of Fire Prevention in Settlements
A night watch is a rota of people who patrol a settlement while it sleeps, looking, listening and smelling for fire; an alarm system is how they wake everyone else.
The Watch Finds The Fire, The Alarm Makes Use Of It
The fire guide gives the watch’s duties: walk the perimeter every 30-60 minutes; check that all cooking and heating fires are properly contained; listen and smell for fire signs such as cracking and smoke; and sound the alarm immediately on finding fire. It describes the alarm as loud and distinctive, heard in every building, with options of a large bell, a metal gong (any large piece of metal struck with a hammer), a horn or a whistle, and different from the security alert.
The shift arithmetic is in the watch scheduling guide (Watch and Patrol Scheduling): 2-hour shifts are best for alertness, 4 hours is the most for effective observation, and each person needs 8 hours of sleep.
Worked Example: The Rota And The Reach Of The Bell
Rota. Inputs: a night of 10 hours; shifts of 2 hours; 2 patrollers at a time (so that one can raise the alarm while the other stays with the fire).
- Shifts: 10 ÷ 2 = 5.
- Person-shifts: 5 × 2 = 10 a night. If each person takes one shift, that is 10 people.
- For 100 adults sharing it equally, each serves one night in ten (100 ÷ 10 = 10).
Bell. The corpus gives the open-air rule that a tenfold rise in distance cuts a sound by 20 dB (Noise Makers). Level change = 20 × log10(distance ratio).
- Listener at 150 m against one at 30 m: 20 × log10(150 ÷ 30) = 20 × log10(5) = 14 dB lower.
- Listener at 150 m against one at 15 m: 20 × log10(10) = 20 dB lower.
The corpus gives no waking threshold for a sleeper, so no absolute level is claimed. The relative result is enough: a bell that wakes the nearest house is 14-20 dB quieter at the far edge, and a wall and a closed door reduce it again. One bell at the centre of a settlement with a 150 m radius is not heard by everyone. Ring from the clusters, or pass the signal from bell to bell, and test it by sleeping people in the farthest house, not by standing near it.
What You Need
- A roster with a night patrol of two, a deputy and a relief
- Alarms at each cluster: a bell, gong or horn that can be reached by whoever finds the fire
- A distinct fire signal that is different from the security alert (Signal Systems)
- Lamps, shielded and safe, and a route with a rope guide where it is dark
- A checklist for the patrol: stoves, forge and kiln, fuel stores, ash buckets, rag piles
Method: Run The Night Watch
Step 1: Set the shifts and the pairs from the roster; hand over in person at each change.
Step 2: Give the patrol its route and its stops, starting with the workshops and fuel stores.
Step 3: Teach one fire signal and one security signal, and practise both. For a fire, loud and continuous wakes the sleeping; the quiet code word is for an attack (Evacuation Procedures).
Step 4: Test the alarm at night from each point, listening in the farthest houses.
Step 5: On finding fire, shout, ring, and send the second patroller to alert the occupants. Judge whether to fight only after both are done.
Common Mistakes
- A single alarm in the middle. The far edge sleeps through it.
- The same signal for fire and attack. People will not know whether to run or hide.
- A lone patroller. There is no one to wake the house while the first fights the fire.
- A patrol who skips the workshops because they are cold. A banked forge and a warm kiln are still fires.
Safety
The watcher's own safety
A lone watcher who walks into a burning building to rescue a sleeper dies in it. Raise the alarm, shout at the door, and let the people who wake come out. Do not carry open flames through dry grass or workshops, and take care on dark paths with ditches and water barrels (Distribution & Access Points).
What’s Next
- Learn next: Response Protocols & Training — what everyone does after the alarm
- Combine with: Detection & Response — the whole chain