Spots Fire Safety Tips

There are things that we need to be aware of to be able to protect our homes from the danger of fire.  We have to know how a fire starts, how to prevent it, and how to control or extinguish it.  When we learn more about fire, we would have a better chance of preventing it from happening and controlling it.  Basically, you can create fire when you combine three elements namely heat, fuel, and oxygen in the right mixture.  When one of these three is absent, a fire would not start.  In essence, you just need to prevent all three elements from coming together to avoid the risk of fire and you just have to remove at least one of the elements for fire suppression.

Accidents happen.  A fire may start when you leave your cooking unattended, you fell asleep while smoking a cigarette, you left a lit candle unattended, you plugged multiple electrical gadgets to a single outlet, or you left any electrical device on for a long time.  There are really so many ways in which a fire could accidentally start.  The worst thing that can happen is that a fire would start when you are sleeping or away from home and you did not have any fire detection devices installed that would warn you of the danger or send an alarm to the fire brigade.

Installing a fire alarm would be a great way of alerting everyone within hearing distance that there is a fire in your house.  These fire detection devices would help you act accordingly.  Of course, everyone in your household should know what to do in such an event.  There are things that you need to do when there is a fire emergency.  You need to call the fire brigade.  Leave the house, gather everyone in a safe distance from the fire, and make sure everyone is accounted for.  You need to determine if it is still possible for you to control or extinguish the fire using a fire extinguisher or just wait for the fire brigade.

There are basically two kinds of fire alarms.  One is manually activated and the other is automatically activated.  Anyone can activate the manually operated one the moment he or she sees something burning.  The other device will automatically activate when it detects increased temperature, thermal heat, smoke, or an actual fire.  The fire detection device that automatically activates would offer better protection for you.  You could sleep peacefully at night knowing that you would be alerted to the danger by the fire alarm.  When there is smoke, it is usually because of fire.  A smoke alarm is also good for fire detection.  You can also install this on every room of your house.

Make sure that everyone knows the sound of the fire and smoke alarms.  Do not forget to replace all batteries in each unit once or twice a year.  Remember to have the devices inspected and serviced regularly to ensure that it is working properly.

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When you are in a building and you hear the blaring sound of the fire alarm, what is the first thing that comes into your mind? You would most probably hear a lot of “Escape! Escape!” in your mind. This is your brain telling you to get out of the premises as fast as you can.

Surely, escaping during a fire is one of the most important things you need to do. This is why, ensuring proper means of escape is crucial so that people are able to get out of a burning premises safely and quickly.

If you own a business or manage a company, ensuring proper means of escape through fire emergency exits is one of your prime duties. This is not only for your own sake but also for the sake of your customers, clients and employees.

Here are the necessary arrangements you need to oversee so that evacuation in your area can easily be carried out.

1. Ensure that the escape route is as short as possible. As you know, every second counts during an emergency. If it takes forever to get to the emergency exit, it is most probable that more people would be injured and some would even die. So as much possible, plan a means of escape that is near all areas to reduce travel time to that point.
2. Consider the number of people that will be using an emergency exit. If an entire floor of the building would only go out through one fire exit, some of them may not be able to get out safely.
3. See to it that all escape routes have clear passageways. All fire exits should be free of any obstructions. Using the fire exit for storing stock is never a good idea. Ensure that passageways are at least a metre wide. Passageways that are more than 30 metres long, or 45 metres in offices need to be divided into equal parts using fire doors.
4. Make proper arrangements for the elderly and disabled. See to it that there are facilities that are specially designed for their quick and easy evacuation of the building.
5. Inform and train all employees in how to escape the building. Doing fire drills once or twice a year is necessary to harness the employees’ abilities to escape the burning premises quickly and easily.
6. Install an emergency lighting system all over the area. This is important so that when the electricity goes out, the place would not be pitch dark.
7. Put appropriate signs for the exit routes. This would help people get out the building quickly.

Aside from proper means of emergency escape, you also need to train your staff and employees on the proper usage of fire suppression equipment like fire extinguishers. For most businesses, the multi-purpose powder fire extinguisher is ideal to use as it is designed to put out three major types of fire (Class A, B, and C). Invite a firefighter to demonstrate and teach your employees on how to use the fire extinguisher the right way.

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