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Safety from workplace fire requires a comprehensive understanding of fire safety guidelines and their implementation. You might have come across different accounts of fire safety guidelines. Are those accounts comprehensive? Not always. But in this article, we’ll lay out a comprehensive workplace fire prevention roadmap.

The entire roadmap can be broken down to individual guidelines pertaining to

• Workplace fire risks.
• Measures to prevent fire.
• Acting in response to fire.
• Handling fire emergencies and evacuation.

It’s customary for every workplace to gather resources that deal with the above topics and educate their employees, so they stay fully prepared for a fire emergency.

When it comes to workplace fire risks, it’s recommended to hire a certified professional, who would visit the building and assess the fire risk. The building manager needs to inform the professional to carry a logbook and report all the findings so that the report could later be used as an educational and training resource for the employees.

The presence of workplace fire hazards increases the risk of fire. To reduce the fire risk, the building manager needs to identify the hazardous materials and get rid of them. Workplace fire hazards are of different types. Some common ones are extension cords and electrical outlets, which are overloaded, the cooking process that goes unsupervised, etc.

Improper handling of combustible and noncombustible materials can also result in workplace fire. For example, the misuse of space heaters, inadequate storage of flammable materials and negligent acts such as disposal of smoking materials on the ground can increase the fire risk to a substantial extent.

The fire prevention measures are as important (if not more) as fire risk assessment. Such measures deal with

• Storage of combustible materials.
• Keeping the premise free from hazardous materials.
• Handling electrical wiring and appliances.
• Keeping the exits open all the time.

When storing combustible and hazardous materials, some guidelines need to be followed. Such guidelines include not storing hazardous materials within fifteen meters of an open heat source, storing flammable materials on separate shelves or rooms in respect to the reactive properties they have, not storing any hazardous material under the stairs and keeping the evacuation routes open. 

Handling electrical wiring and appliances is important in reducing fire risk. A fire safety supervisor needs to inspect electrical equipment and cords so equipment safety could be ensured. To ensure fire equipment safety, the use of extension cords should be kept at a bare minimum.

The electrical outlet and the extension cord need to be checked frequently to nullify the possibility of overheating. Proper use of extension cords is necessary for fire equipment safety. The cords, for example, should never be pinned, tied or stapled. All electrical equipment need to be adequately grounded. If a frayed wiring or a cracked electrical outlet is found, then that should be immediately taken out of service.

Evacuation is a key part of fire emergency preparation. For evacuation, exits should be kept open. A blocked exit is a reason behind deaths caused by fire. To keep the exit open, the building manager must first understand what an exit path stands for.

Corridors, stairways and passages leading to the emergency exit door are all examples of exit paths. The path that is outside of the exit door and that takes someone away from the building is also an example of the exit path.

In case of a fire emergency, the building manager needs to follow the proper evacuation procedure. The first thing he needs to do is activate the fire alarm system. Next, he needs to shut down all concurrent procedures that are left unattended during the building evacuation procedure.

During a building fire, the elevator shouldn’t be used. This applies to health care facilities too. The health care staff members should use alternative to staircase to take handicapped patients outside the building.

Using fire extinguisher is a vital part of workplace fire safety. However, fire extinguisher should be used only if the fire is small. If it is large instead, then evacuating the building ASAP is a better idea.

Hence, as you can see, workplace fire safety includes building evacuation, handling frayed electrical wiring and flammable materials carefully and using equipment to extinguish the fire. A comprehensive guideline on workplace fire safety should include all of them.

Katie Smith is a Fire Expert and his area of interests and expertise lies in forensic science and accident or crime scene investigation related matters. He often consults Houston Fire Investigation