Major Drill at Thon Hotel Panorama
2026-06-01 News
How do you ensure that theory actually works when the alarm goes off and smoke starts to spread? On June 1, 2026, PiD Solutions participated in an extensive and realistic major drill at Thon Hotel Panorama, in close cooperation with the Oslo Fire and Rescue Service (OBRE).
When seconds count, nothing can be left to chance. For a busy hotel in the heart of Oslo, the safety of guests, staff, and tenants is always the top priority. The emergency drill provided a unique opportunity to test the hotel’s routines under maximum pressure.
The Purpose of the Drill: Safety at Every Stage
The main purpose of such a major drill is to strengthen the participants’ ability to handle a serious incident in a structured and efficient manner. It is not just about evacuating a building, but about training in decision-making, cooperation between different actors, and establishing a shared situational awareness under pressure.
When emergency services arrive at an incident scene, the flow of information from the hotel management must be crystal clear. Where is the fire? Has everyone been evacuated? Are there hazardous substances in the building? The drill simulated precisely this critical phase.
What Was Trained On
Through a carefully planned operational timeline, hotel staff and the fire department were challenged in several areas:
- Incident management and alerting: Evaluation of the first critical phase after the internal alarm was triggered due to a simulated fire on the top floor.
- Smoke diving and life-saving: OBRE deployed with a full crew to conduct smoke diving under realistic conditions with dense smoke development, where the goal was to locate and rescue rescue-dummies in the building.
- Cooperation and communication: Training on effective interaction and information exchange between internal hotel resources and emergency services.
- Role understanding: Ensuring that all involved parties understood their specific tasks, responsibilities, and interfaces in a crisis situation.
Valuable Experience
The major drill provided the hotel management, emergency services, and us at PiD Solutions with several key experiences for future emergency preparedness work. One of the most important lessons was the importance of real-time information; when stress levels are high and smoke development limits visibility in the corridors, it is absolutely critical that operational management can quickly access accurate floor plans and evacuation status.
Experience clearly shows that regular, practical training combined with an easily accessible MOM (Management, Operation and Maintenance) system is the key to minimizing the scope of damage and ensuring a safe evacuation should a real situation arise.
From Emergency Plan to Practical Reality
For us at PiD Solutions, drills like this reinforce why we are passionate about systematic safety work. Good public safety starts long before the alarm goes off. It is about having systems that ensure documentation is up to date, non-conformities are closed continuously, and employees have the right competence.
Through our complete MOM system, PiD Drift, we ensure that statutory requirements for fire safety, HSE, and coordination are handled in a simple and clear manner - directly from your mobile phone. Combined with targeted training through PiD Kurs, we help ensure that property management, tenants, and operational staff have the confidence required to act correctly if a crisis should occur.
We would like to extend a big thank you to Thon Hotel Panorama and the Thon Group for taking safety with the utmost seriousness, and to the Oslo Fire and Rescue Service for an incredibly professional cooperation during the drill on June 1, 2026.
