Health & Wellbeing

5aver combines fire evacuation alarm, lantern and breathing mask

5aver combines fire evacuation alarm, lantern and breathing mask
The 5aver combines LED lantern and triple-filter mask
The 5aver combines LED lantern and triple-filter mask
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A wall-mountable package housing four 5aver units
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A wall-mountable package housing four 5aver units
The 5aver combines LED lantern and triple-filter mask
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The 5aver combines LED lantern and triple-filter mask
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The thought of getting caught in a building fire is terrifying. Flames raging, smoke obscuring your vision and making it difficult to breathe, infrastructure crumbling, and you're trying desperately to remain calm and get out. The 5aver won't douse the flames, but the grab-and-go combination of lantern, alarm and mask is designed to help you find your way to safety in a hurry.

The 5aver is designed to be mounted on the wall and used during fire evacuations. When it's pulled off the wall, the lantern portion automatically turns on to increase visibility and the alarm activates to alert others to your location. The mask unscrews from the lantern and attaches around the nose and mouth and uses a combination of pre-filter, hopcalite filter and HEPA filter to protect from smoke, dust, carbon monoxide and other airborne particles.

Besides playing on the word "saver," according to its Korean manufacturer, GemVax & Kael Co., the "5" in its name refers to the fact that it becomes difficult for firefighters to get inside the building five minutes after a fire starts and the survival rate for those still inside drops by five to seven percent each minute after those first five. Anyone in the building obviously wants to get out before that, and the 5aver is designed to help get you do just that.

The 5aver won a "Best of the Best" Red Dot product design award earlier this year with the jury recognizing it for its highly visible, appealing and design as well as its multifunctional capabilities.

"The design vocabulary of the 5aver visualizes its purpose – in case of an emergency, everyone will know where to find it," the jury said in a statement. "It is intuitive to use and ready in a few seconds. The coloring of the 5aver is highly distinctive; the system is space-saving and compact."

The 5aver appears to be a great safety precaution for homes, offices and any buildings where the danger of getting trapped in a fire exists. It's packaged in several wall-mountable options, including two- and four-person versions.

Source: 5aver, Red Dot

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3 comments
3 comments
bergamot69
Can you switch off the alarm? Could be very dangerous if you are trying to communicate with others, eg if you need to tell others to get down low to escape the smoke, or to summon a terrified child so that you can evacuate them. Also you might want to be able to hear any telltale sounds of imminent structural collapse of portions of the building, or instructions from fire crew.
If it can be silenced then this would be a fantastic device to put next to every bed in a house.
History Nut
I agree that the alarm function should be manual not automatic. It appears to lack any protection for the eyes. It should include a bag-like hood to pull over the head that receives the exhaled air from the filter that would inflate the bag and provide non-irritated vision. Although in a fire, the smoke usually fills the space and you can't see anything, people will try and see thereby causing irritation in the eyes which will affect their ability to safely exit the fire. Good idea that needs a little more work. There was a similar device called an Evac-U-8 years ago but it got killed by lawsuits.
James Kelly
Does the unit have a strap to hold it in place on your face? (Did I miss this?) I agree with the importance of vision protection by History Nut. Do the units have batteries for the lantern function and if so, how often do they need to be "refreshed"?