Honeywell Integrated Building System Guides Residents to Safety & Minimizes Damages in Istanbul High-Rise Fire

Honeywell‘s integrated building management system played a key role in safely evacuating residents and minimizing damage in a fire at the 42-floor luxury Polat Tower in Turkey last week.  Honeywell supplied the residence with integrated building management systems for HVAC and lighting, fully integrated with other systems for fire alarm, card access, intrusion detection and CCTV. 

As the fire spread over building’s façade, the fire sensors connected to the Honeywell intelligent fire alarm system gave alarm signals to the control center, and then initiated a number of fire emergency operations across other key building systems.   The smoke damper from the floor where the alarm was received was opened and exhaust fans on the roof were switched on as natural gas flow to the building was stopped.  Pressure fans serving the fire staircase and elevator shafts were switched on to prevent spread of the fire to other floors, and the integrated public address/voice alarm system was activated to instruct the 1,500 residents to evacuate.  Additionally, the speakers and strobe lights located through the staircases were activated to guide residents towards exits and all access controlled doors, including turnstiles on the ground floor, exit barriers in the car park and all other doors on the way towards the exits, were released automatically in order to enable quick escape of residents from building without creating any panic.

No injuries were sustained during the fire, and Honeywell’s smart building system has been credited with avoiding a much larger disaster. 

The integrated smart building system was implemented in Polat Tower in 2002 and has been maintained by Honeywell since that time.