Fire safety management for restaurants:

Staff in restaurants must be aware that customers who have been served their food are always reluctant to leave that food and evacuate. Similarly, shoppers in large department stores are usually keen to keep browsing the items they are interested in rather than evacuate.

In clubs and other places where there is music being played, or other entertainment, it is important that the music (or other entertainment) is turned off immediately when the evacuation signal is given. This will enable the evacuation warning message or signal to be heard and it will remove the incentive that some people feel to stay in the building.  In theatres and concert halls the most effective method of giving people the evacuation signal has been found to be a person on the stage with a microphone telling them to leave immediately.  If this happens then people tend to have sufficient

confidence in the message.  If this does not happen, people often start to doubt if they still need to evacuate.  People do tend to need information to be confirmed at least once, and often a number of times, before they can accept it as the truth.