Public/complex buildings St Michael’s Mount
St Michael’s Mount is a unique Grade 1 listed heritage castle on a tidal island off the coast of Marazion in Cornwall. At low tide, the castle is accessible via a causeway along the exposed seabed, but at high tide it is reachable only by boat. Both a private family home for Lord and Lady St Levan and public historic site open to visitors, it attracts thousands of visitors each year, particularly during peak summer season. Although the isolated location presents obvious
challenges with regard to fire safety, the Mount has an exemplary set of measures in place, including: • a strong relationship with fire authority: local fire officers regularly conduct training exercises using watercraft, helicopters, and/or amphibious vehicles to simulate an emergency scenario during high tide, in conjunction with Her Majesty’s Coast Guards
•
firefighting equipment permanently located on the island: many lengths of hose, pumps and protective equipment are strategically located and inspected regularly by the local fire service
• a high level of fire safety management: trained room stewards are strategically located along the tourist route to help in an evacuation scenario, and management staff proactively conduct regular maintenance of equipment and annual risk assessments
•
radio communication: staff have personal handheld radios, and therefore can quickly communicate key information such as the location of a fire
The primary objective for The Fire Surgery was to determine the maximum number of people that could be accommodated safely within the castle, and to identify what changes (if any) would be necessary to ensure safe operation during the peak summer season. This was answered using qualitative and quantitative fire engineering techniques. Firstly, the maximum number of occupants on a busy summer’s day was calculated based on a density factor of 0.5m2
/person, a well established
figure in fire engineering guidance. This was correlated with visitor numbers, before escape routes from each area were identified and reviewed in detail. For each route, the flow rate for people escaping was then calculated based on available escape width, including narrow existing passages. Using these calculated flow rates, an optimised
strategy was developed to evacuate the castle as quickly as possible. Four separate fire scenarios were reviewed to discount escape routes, representing either the most likely fire scenario (for example, a room with an open fire), or fire scenarios with the largest impact on escape (ie a fire blocking an escape route). The times from rooms to places of relative safety were estimated and benchmarked against guidance expectations.
Once the best escape strategy had been
identified for each scenario, a set of simple emergency procedures was developed for staff, and these procedures have been incorporated into regular operations. This new bespoke strategy for evacuation is robustly supported by the existing measures already in place, which provides a high degree of confidence that the castle has suitable fire safety measures for the numbers visiting it every summer for many years to come.
Worthing Pier
Another fine example of the unique fire safety challenges presented by heritage buildings is the Victorian pleasure pier at Worthing, which projects around 300m into the English Channel and has several architecturally important buildings located on it (including the Grade II listed Southern Pavilion). Pleasure piers have a long history associated with destructive fire incidents, and the pier at Worthing is no exception. In 1933, the pier survived a significant fire incident which was brought sharply back into focus in 2015 when a ‘near miss’ took place involving smoking materials. Following this incident, pier owners Adur & Worthing Councils commissioned a full review of the fire safety arrangements on the structure to improve both life safety and property protection. Adopting a qualitative design review approach
akin to that outlined in BS 7974, with full stakeholder engagement of those who own, manage, and work on the pier, passive and active fire protection measures were assessed, along with procedural systems. The existing conditions were benchmarked
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