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Warehouse safety


David Sibert discusses the research undertaken by the Fire Brigades Union into improving firefighter safety in warehouse fires


A single storey warehouse up to a 20,000m2


T THE moment, in England and Wales, Approved Document B of the Building Regulations makes it permissible to build a footprint


with an 18m roof height without sprinklers. There is no limit whatsoever on the size of a single storey industrial building that can be built without sprinklers. Obviously sprinklers protect property, but Building


Regulations are not concerned with property; they are concerned with the safety of occupants – and in terms of the safety of occupants, there is no evidence that these controls need tightening. There are very few fi re injuries, let alone fi re deaths in warehouses, so it would appear that the existing standards are appropriate. However, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) believed


that there is a need to reduce the limit in order to protect firefighter safety. Firefighters are expected to enter burning warehouses and industrial buildings to search for and to rescue the trapped and the injured. Indeed, Building Regulation B5 requires that a building is provided with ‘reasonable facilities to assist fi refi ghters in the protection of life’. The problem is that when fi refi ghters arrive at


large warehouse fi res, it is often the case that not everyone is accounted for, so they begin search and rescue operations inside the building only to


32 FEBRUARY 2018 www.frmjournal.com


fi nd out later that there was never anyone inside. So the frequency with which fi refi ghters carry out search and rescue inside warehouses is not refl ected in occupant injury and fatality statistics. Firefi ghters have died in large unsprinklered


warehouse fi res, and there have been countless near misses (although there is no central database of such events to use as evidence for near misses), so clearly there is an argument that ADB does not always deliver the requirement of Building Regulation B5 in warehouses and industrial buildings. All that ADB currently demands of a massive


warehouse or industrial building is that it should be provided with a perimeter road to enable a fi re engine to drive round the outside and access any doors. But fi refi ghter experience is that perimeter access to a massive shed full of combustible material does not constitute ‘reasonable facilities to assist fi refi ghters in the protection of life’. In November 2007, four Warwickshire fi refi ghters – Ian Reid, John Averis, Ashley Stephens and Darren Yates-Badley – died after entering a burning warehouse in Atherstone on Stour.


The project


If Building Regulation B5 is to be fully complied with in warehouses and industrial buildings, ADB


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