Health and safety


Fire safety precautions to reduce risk to residents


David Hulton, health and safety manager at HC-One, provides a brief overview of the most basic of fire safety preparations that should be taken in a care home environment and points to sources of further advice, guidance and support


Have you ever wondered why so many accounts of tragic events begin: “It was just another ordinary day”? The answer is that it is always another ordinary day, until a fire breaks out. It starts off small of course, spreading slowly until someone notices it and sets off an alarm, or the smoke or heat build up enough to activate a detector and the alarm sounds. Once the alarm sounds, we think that the problems are over; the fire has been discovered and has presumably been dealt with, but is this the end of the story? Fires don’t just happen in care homes with a terrible reputation, where staff don’t care and the conditions are dreadful. For example, a recent fire in a care home rated ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), in which fire spread along the roof space, eventually collapsing and leaving two people dead and over 30 injured, shows that there is rather more than just having a lovely home and caring, knowledgeable staff to preventing, detecting and escaping a fire. A simple and effective aide-mémoire for fire prevention is the fire triangle; one side is oxygen, one is fuel and the other is heat - if all three are present in sufficient quantities, then a fire will almost certainly result.


Prevention


Perhaps we should consider care home fire safety preparations as a square with four sides (see Figure 1). It’s not just about removing rubbish as often as possible and reducing fire loading - the amount of flammable material in a given area, especially as applied to an emergency evacuation route - on corridors. We also


need to think about the construction and integrity of the building itself. This is often where care homes start and finish their fire safety preparation, but trying to limit the spread of fire and smoke is only part of the whole approach.


It is also important to consider:


l the integrity of designed compartmentation – do cross


Fires don’t just happen in care homes with a terrible reputation where staff don’t care and the conditions are dreadful


January 2018 • www.thecarehomeenvironment.com


corridor fire doors close properly? Are there breaches in compartmentation above the visible fire doors?1


l the correct fitting of fire doors where appropriate – at Rosepark care home in Uddingston, South Lanarkshire, a fire broke out in a cupboard on 31 January 2004 and ripped through the building;2


bedroom doors were


open, which meant they were no longer fire doors and could not stop the spread of smoke


l the fitting of self closer devices on fire doors or appropriate ‘hold open’ devices, which release the door upon activation of a fire alarm


35


©Sue Harper


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