The entire purpose of fire alarm notification appliances is to "notify" someone that a condition requires action. This might be a fire that requires evacuation of the building. It might be impairment of a fire protection system, such as turning off a sprinkler system or a fire pump. It could also be a problem with the fire alarm system itself, such as a circuit ground fault or loss of the primary power supply to the fire alarm control panel. All of these conditions require the fire alarm system to "notify" someone so that appropriate action can be initiated.

NOTE: This is an unformatted excerpt from our online fire protection training library.