fire safety


Horbury teams use a smartphone-enabled survey system to highlight any problems


B


ack in June, the Government ordered more than 17,000 care homes, hospitals and hospices to


carry out checks on the fire safety in their buildings. A number of trusts were found to


have serious breaches, while some had failings in basic fire standards and others were warned that a failure to properly compartmentalise areas was putting patients at intolerable risk if fire broke out. Fire compartmentation is vitally


important. Buildings 10 years old or less will


have been built in accordance with Building Regulations Approved Document B, which requires that the building be sub-divided into a number of discreet compartments or cells. Within each cell, the dividing walls are


filled with specialist materials which prevent the passage of fire from one cell to another for a given period of time. Compartmentation aims to contain


fires and has also been found to limit damage to a building and its contents.


A means of escape One of the main benefits of compartmentation is that it protects ‘means of escape’ routes from a building. This feature is particularly important


where there is minimal fire separation other than the means of escape, for example a small care home served only by a single flight of stairs. In this case, the floor area may be


open plan, with no partitions. However, the stairs should be enclosed by fire walls and fire doors to ensure a fire within any part of the accommodation


Fire separation, if installed correctly, does have an enviable success rate.


cannot pass through to the stairway. Spaces that connect fire


compartments, such as stairways and service shafts, are described as ‘protected shafts’. These play an important role in restricting fire spread between the compartments. Larger buildings, such as hospitals,


have greater reliance on fire compartmentation. Most of these buildings are divided


into ‘compartments’ which can withstand a fire for a specific amount of time, either inside the compartment or externally. This protective barrier gives occupants a chance to be evacuated and for emergency services to arrive and extinguish the fire, or for the fire to extinguish on its own. Due to compartmentation, a hospital


will employ a ‘horizontal phased evacuation’. Those able to be evacuated from the building without assistance will be evacuated immediately. In a compartment that has a fire,


patients who cannot be moved far are moved to an adjacent compartment. This means patients only have to travel a short distance where necessary, drastically reducing the dangers of being away from essential equipment, such as life support machines. When the emergency services arrive, they will assess the situation and


Hospitals, health centres and care homes are at risk as they use horizontal evacuation techniques due to the vulnerable nature of patients and residents


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