§ 279. Fire alarm signal systems and fire drills. 1. Fire alarm signal
systems. Except as may otherwise be provided by the board in its rules,
every factory building over two stories in height in which more than
twenty-five persons are employed above the ground floor shall be
equipped by the owner thereof with a fire alarm signal system having a
sufficient number of signals clearly audible to all occupants of the
building, and so arranged as to permit the sounding of all the alarms
within the building whenever the alarm is sounded in any portion
thereof. Such system shall be maintained in good working order and no
person shall tamper with same or render ineffective any portion thereof
except to repair it. A person discovering a fire shall cause an alarm to
be sounded immediately. The board of standards and appeals in the city
of New York and elsewhere the board may make rules and regulations
relating to the installation of fire alarm signals and prescribing the
number, character and location of the signals and the method and
character of the installation including that of all appliances in
connection therewith.

2. Fire drills. Except as may otherwise be provided by the board in
its rules, in every factory building over two stories in height in which
more than twenty-five persons are employed above the ground floor, a
fire drill shall be conducted at least once a month in which all of the
occupants of the building shall participate simultaneously and which
shall conduct all such occupants to a place of safety. In New York city
the fire commissioner and elsewhere the board shall make rules,
regulations and special orders necessary or suitable to each situation
and to secure the personal co-operation of all the tenants of the
building in a fire drill of all the occupants thereof. Such rules,
regulations and orders may require the posting of the same or an
abstract thereof and may prescribe upon whom shall rest the duty of
carrying them out.

3. Exceptions. Subdivisions one and two of this section shall not
apply to a building in which every square foot of the floor area on all
stories is protected with an automatic sprinkler system having two
adequate sources of water supply and approved by the public authorities
having jurisdiction thereof and in which also the maximum number of
occupants of any one floor does not exceed by more than fifty per centum
the capacity of the exits, as determined by subdivisions one, two, three
and four of section two hundred and seventy-eight. If the commissioner
after investigation determines that the spirit of this chapter is
observed and public safety secured he may permit in place of the
automatic sprinkler system before specified an automatic sprinkler
system having one adequate source of water supply and approved by the
public authorities having jurisdiction thereof.

4. The provisions of this section shall be enforced in the city of New
York by the fire commissioner of said city and elsewhere by the
commissioner.