Blogs on Fire Safety Products and Services

Have the lessons of Britain’s worst hotel fire been learned? A report on this week’s BBC1′s Inside Out South West programme suggests not.

On the fifth anniversary of the fire that destroyed the Penhallow Hotel in Newquay in August 2007, killing three people, an undercover investigation has revealed that there are still serious fire safety dangers at a large number of west country hotels, putting guests at serious risk should a fire break out.

All but one of the forty hotels visited by the BBC programme’s own undercover fire safety expert failed his inspection on a host of important points; including hazardous voids and badly fitting fire doors that smoke could penetrate, wedged fire doors, absence of fire-resistant glazing, no intumescent hinges, blocked corridors, and combustible materials under fire escapes.

Data obtained by the BBC under Freedom of Information requests also revealed that only about a quarter of hotels in Devon and Somerset had been inspected by the Fire & Rescue Service in the past five years., with half of those inspected judged ‘unsatisfactory’.

The programme’s conclusion? The real fear is that ‘the economic downturn is leading to corners being cut on fire safety.’ Worryingly, the investigation showed that hoteliers are also compromising safety by extending the time between essential fire safety maintenance visits by contractors.

Tom Welland, Fireco’s Commercial Director says that fire doors play such an important role in protecting staff and guests from smoke and flame in the event of fire, that their correct fitting, use and maintenance is vital. A fire risk assessment, will form the proper basis for a fire safety strategy, must be completed by a competent person, be up-to-date and reviewed on a regular basis. ‘If you get a professional to carry this out for you, ensure that you use a properly trained and qualified specialist. If a fire does break out, it is crucial that you have fire safety policies in place that are designed to help reduce damage and, more importantly, help guests to get out of the building safely.”

The company that owned the Penhallow Hotel in Newquay was fined £80,000 for breaching fire safety law and ordered to pay £62,000 in costs, so it’s vital that hoteliers are in no doubt as to how severe the potential penalties are.

For more information contact Fireco on 0845 241 7474, email services@firecoltd.com or visit www.firecoltd.com

A month doesn’t pass without reports of another care home fire. Each year in the UK there are between 800 and 900 fires in premises providing care for older persons. During the last decade more than 45 people died in such fires with over 1,000 being injured.

In the latest, worrying incident, fire fighters from across Cornwall were called to a large fire at a residential care home in Looe. Thankfully the blaze was contained, Residents were moved to safety and no-one was injured.

According to a recent report by Surrey’s Fire and Rescue service, all six of the county’s fire deaths in the period from September 2011 to January this year, were people over the age of 60, with five suffering from mental health issues or dementia, highlighting the urgent need to better protect the growing elderly population in care.

The Report also highlights the need for fire emergency planning to anticipate the conditions of a real fire event, with serious attention given to staff training and realistic simulations and role-playing.

As the Report confirms, in many cases Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans’ (PEEPs) may need to be considered; and any PEEP developed for care clients may need to be incorporated into the individual’s Care Plan. For disabled people it’s also vital to anticipate any reasonable measures in the plan that would make it easier for their disability rights to be exercised.
Crucially, staff must be kept aware of potential fire hazards, and of their building’s specific fire procedures, with the emphasis on personal discipline, suppression of panic, and coolness under pressure. In an evaluation of risk, even radical solutions that may not be appropriate for the disabled or infirm in normal circumstances can be reasonably considered in a fire emergency, such as allowing a disabled person to move down the stairs on their bottom. Of course, it would not be acceptable for them to do this in any other circumstances.

So case-by-case evaluation of risk should be the rule, in consultation with the individuals concerned, to shape a plan tailored to their individual needs, including detailed information of their likely movements during an evacuation.

Managing fire risk
Tom Welland, Commercial Director for Fireco Ltd., the official fire safety consultants to the UK’s leading care sector associations, says that Care Management, whether responsible for care homes, nursing homes, or domiciliary care, must ensure that staff are trained in their duties and are fully aware of fire safety as part of their job.

‘You’ve got to get staff to spot risk as they go about their day-to-day duties. So they won’t think “I’ll store this mattress here, it’s only for a day” because, if there is a fire on that very day and it’s blocking an entrance or exit, it could prove fatal.’

And be warned! Enforcement notices served on care premises are a reality! Failure to comply with the Fire Safety Order can result in heavy fines or even in a custodial sentence. Find out more.

Two shipping tragedies separated by 100 years show how, despite the massive advances in ship engineering and passenger safety, human behaviour can still have a devastating impact on surviving a catastrophic event.

In both the Titanic and the Costa Concordia disasters, the misplaced belief that the ‘unthinkable’ would never happen allowed serious flaws in both safety planning and procedure to fester – a toxic mix that when combined with passengers’ lack of belief that, when the alarm was sounded, anything serious was wrong, fuelled confusion and fatally delayed evacuation.

First-hand accounts describe the ensuing chaos on the Costa Concordia when passengers finally realised they were in a life or death situation – the crew had not held a safety drill for the 600 passengers who boarded at the port of Rome prior to the ship hitting rocks.

So what do these events have in common with fire safety in commercial buildings? Well, industry research shows that as the probability of a fire event recedes complacency starts to creep in. Escape routes are not quite so vigorously monitored; the odd box or fire extinguisher is used to hold open a fire door; Staff fire safety training and drills are allowed to slip.

In isolation these things may not seem significant, but as we have seen time and again, in life-threatening situations together they can prove fatal.

Behavioural studies show that some people are just not prepared, considered, or responsive to emergencies without training. Research into how people react in emergencies demonstrates just how particularly vulnerable people are in fire evacuations from buildings. In the event of a fire alarm sounding 40 percent of the public would instinctively follow people in their vicinity – even into danger, and only 29 percent would use the nearest exit.

It’s vitally important to ensure that fire alarms are regularly maintained to avoid false alarms, and ever more importantly to minimise all potential fire hazards and reduce the risk of a fire spreading. This can be achieved through good housekeeping and a vigorous approach to fire risk management.

The very nature of risk assessment requires considered thought to be given to any eventuality however remote and to develop prevention and protection strategies. Auditing a building’s risk to life from fire is a complex task and requires a lot of experience. A Fire Risk Assessment is the blueprint to fire precautions. Ensuring its suitability ensures the occupant’s safety, so the need for it to be a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks is key.

If you are in doubt, the best guidance is to seek sound advice from a qualified, competent fire assessor.

Fireco, the UK’s leading specialist in simple, effective services and solutions for fire safety management, are manufacturers of a wide range of simple, effective fire safety solutions including Freedor, the world’s first wireless, electrically powered free-swing door closer, and Dorgard X wireless fire door retainers, and are approved fire safety consultants to a number of the UK’s leading companies and organisations.

For more information contact Fireco on 0845 241 7474,
email services@firecoltd.com or visit www.firecoltd.com

Last year saw a spate of serious fires at waste management sites in the space of just three days. Those four fires, separated by only hours, raised serious concerns as to whether waste and recycling operations are easy prey for arsonists.

National fire statistics indicate that there are typically one hundred waste site fires each year in the UK. The consequences of these incidents can be devastating, with the fallout sometimes continuing for many weeks. Of real concern were waste plant fires that last year forced homes to be evacuated and a motorway to be closed, with scenes of toxic smoke plumes trailing over a twenty mile radius, accompanied by the blasts of alkaline zinc chloride batteries exploding.

In many of these cases the toxicity of burning plastics was a major issue, with thousands of tonnes of waste, such as bales of plastic, going up in smoke. In an industry, then, that tackles in the UK around 430 million tonnes of waste each year, with an infrastructure employing some 160,000 workers, the hazards for life safety are of critical concern to risk management, and its of urgent priority that every requirement of safety law compliance should be observed.

Fire risk and waste management
As you’ll be only too aware, there is a complex maze of risk legislation to be negotiated by site operators for safe working, including risk assessments under Health and Safety at Work regulations, workplace transport safety, chemical storage, and handling of flammable substances, a list by no means exhaustive.

And, in respect of fire risk management, the duty-holder’s close attention is drawn to the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order (RRFSO), with a view to applying its recommendations to the special challenges presented by a site’s fire safety strategy.

To enable you to explore common ground, and to start evaluating risks often encountered in waste management sites and material recycling facilities (MRFs), the following Ten Top Safety Hints should provide some useful guidelines.

Ten Top Safety Hints
1—Be alert School holidays are times of greatest activity for juvenile arsonists. The four waste site fires reported over the May Bank Holiday weekend last year were believed to be the work of school-age arsonists. Even greater precautions should be taken to protect sites during school holidays. Check perimeter fences and enclosures for possible breaches.

2—No Hiding Place Deterrents to arsonists include good quality energy-efficient dusk to dawn lighting, which is vandal resistant. Avoid high lighting levels, which may produce dark shadows that offer concealment. Roofs and their approaches should be assessed for ways of inhibiting casual access and to avoid providing hiding places for intruders.

3—Keep Staff Informed It’s essential to keep staff regularly informed of fire safety routines and precautions. There should be regular information, instruction and training for staff, during their normal working hours, about fire safety measures in your workplace, from the day they start work, and throughout the period they work at the site.

4—Consult Your Staff There should be continuous evaluation of site safety issues in collaboration with staff. The support of site staff is essential to running a safe site. Safety representatives should encourage staff to contribute positively by identifying problems and generating sound practical ideas or solutions that can achieve fire safety under prevailing conditions.

5—Check Special Fire Risks Some materials, such as rubber crumb, have been reported to have ignited spontaneously. Paper and other cellulose-based materials have reportedly been known to self-heat, and have even ignited where stocks are so large that the heat cannot radiate safely. Some materials can become explosive if in a fine particle condition (e.g. certain dusts). Consult the product trade associations regularly for the materials your site handles to seek further guidance on the precautions to take.

6—Check Hot Spots The intrusions of ‘tramp’ metals, as unwelcome contaminants in materials such as waste paper, can cause localised ‘hot spots’ by finding their way
into moving machinery. Presorting and/or extraction by a magnet/eddy current separator of these contaminants are necessary precautions, especially when ignitable or explosive materials are present.

7—Permits to Hot Work Poorly controlled hot work (welding, burning, etc) can cause catastrophic fires. Where flammable materials are present, hot work should be risk assessed and effective measures put into place to reduce the risk of fire. It may be necessary to carry out hot work under a rigorous permit-to-work system.

8—Emergency Services Liaison It’s essential to establish good lines of communication with the Fire and Rescue Services to establish the most efficient means of liaison. Particularly, the emergency services should be advised of all relevant information about dangerous substances handled at your site to inform the provisions of your Emergency Plan.

9—Regular Maintenance Routines Central to efficient fire safety routines is a schedule of regular maintenance. You must ensure that your premises and any equipment provided in connection with firefighting, fire detection and warning, or emergency routes and exits are covered by a suitable system of maintenance, and are maintained by a competent person in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.

10—Develop an Emergency Plan The findings of your Fire Risk Assessment will help you to develop your Emergency Plan for the instruction, information and training you need to provide, together with the co-operation and co-ordination arrangements required for other responsible people, and the routines for maintenance and testing of the fire precautions. If conditions on the site change, your Emergency Plan should reflect any new hazards that may arise.

And remember, think ahead. You can reduce subsequent losses and disruption resulting from a fire by preparing a Disaster Recovery Plan. Arson is a reality. Your plan will pay dividends in the event of a serious fire, whether started accidentally or deliberately.

We assesses Viridor
Viridor, one of the UK’s leading recycling, renewable energy and waste management companies, works with more than 90 local authorities and thousands of private customers across the country.

To meet Viridor’s very demanding standards of protection and risk abatement, the company recently commissioned a national fire risk audit of over 40 of their sites across the UK. To accomplish this major fire safety programme, Viridor has appointed us – the UK’s leading specialists in Building Consultancy – we are carrying out the Fire Risk Assessments under exacting criteria.

As part of the fire risk assessment process, we are making recommendations to improve some of the physical features of fire protection and fire management within newly acquired Viridor sites across the United Kingdom. Viridor’s Health & Safety department says that it values the importance of such work in helping the company ensure sites meet their stringent requirements.

As one of the UK’s leading Building Consultancies, we already provide high quality advice and services to clients throughout the UK including effective fire safety strategies to major UK organisations such as the BBC and EDF Energy, through FM companies Lorne Stewart and Johnson Controls.

Our Building Consultancy Division offers a wide range of specialist building consultancy skills and services that are designed to deliver integrated, effective solutions to the FM sector, including Access Audits, Energy Surveys, Fire Safety Consultancy and Training, Building Regulation, Construction, Design & Management (CDM), Listed Buildings and Asbestos Consultancy Surveys.

For more information contact us on 0845 241 7474 or +44(0)1273 320 650
e-mail services@firecoltd.com or visit www.firecoltd.com