1. Emergencies and Planning

There is an old saying: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.  This was over-used in many business improvement courses and became one of those phrases which were used so often as to become meaningless. But we resurrect it here without a blush because it is so pertinent to the subject of fire safety.

Fires happen. Many people think it will never happen to them but the statistics belie this.  Over the past decade there have been an average of 550,000 fire incidents per year attended by the Fire and Rescue Service. Fatalities for the same period have average 275 annually, injuries around 7,500.  Half a million fire incidents a year in a country as small as the UK is a significant figure. 

It is therefore logical and morally correct to ensure that you plan what to do if an emergency occurs and to practise and refine your plans.

Of course, there are emergencies other than fire that can occur in the workplace and every employer must identify what emergencies could occur and what steps they will take in such an event. The plans you make for dealing with a fire can be adapted for other emergency situations, but each plan must be specific to the risks presented by the particular emergency.

Fire Safety Planning

All you need to know is covered in the other elements of this section. Fire safety planning means that you (Director/business owner/Board in conjunction with the Competent Person and Senior Managers) go through each of these elements and put them in place for your organisation.

Fire Drills

These really come under the fire protection category but we’ve included it here as well because conducting fire drills is such an important part of fire planning.  NB If you have people in your organisation who are disabled, you must have a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEP) in place and this must be practised during a fire drill. There is more information on PEEPs at the bottom of this page.

We’ve all been there – it’s a cold, wet day, you’re in the middle of an important piece of work, and then the fire alarm goes off.  With much moaning and bad grace most people amble out of the building and make their way to the front door – you know, the entrance everyone uses when they come to work – and shuffle up to the assembly point.  This apology for a fire drill must be overseen by the Competent Person (or the lucky person who’s been allocated the task). Complete the Fire Drill Record, and inform all staff of what went wrong and how badly they performed.  Tell them you’ll be holding another drill, then do so very soon afterwards. If there is only minimal improvement, inform everyone that you will be holding these drills until everyone gets it right. Competent Persons should not be sensitive souls.

How to get it right:

• Everyone must leave by the nearest fire exit (don’t just walk to the front door)
• On hearing the alarm, get up and leave (don’t start looking for bags or coats)
• Walk quickly to the assembly point (don’t run, don’t shuffle, don’t amble)
• Report to the person with the register at the Assembly Point

That’s it!

 Everyone should be out of the premises and at an Assembly Point within 2 minutes. That’s not a lot of time out of a working life to practise saving yourself from a fire.

Analysing the results:

Once the fire drill has been conducted, the Competent Person must ensure the results are looked at in detail

• If it took longer than 2 minutes for everyone to arrive and register at an Assembly Point, why was that? What do you have to do to put this right?
• If there some people who didn’t take part, why was that?  What do you have to do to put this right? (There is more about this in point 6 below.)
• Did the Fire Wardens do their job correctly?
• Did everyone hear the alarm?
• Did the Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans work?

Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs)

When planning for emergencies, you have to consider everyone who could be affected.  This must include the disabled and the vulnerable.

1. Can everyone hear the fire alarm? If you have deaf or hearing-impaired people in your organisation, or people who work in a noisy environment, it is unlikely that they will be able to hear the alarm.  The two primary methods of dealing with this are:
   1. Install visual alarms such as flashing lights
   2. Instruct a colleague to alert them. If you opt for this method, you must make sure that you have cover for the nominated colleague for holidays and absences.
   3. Conduct training so that the hearing-impaired person/people and the nominated colleague understand exactly what they have to do. This training must be repeated annually or whenever there is a change of personnel e.g. a nominated colleague has to be replaced.
2. Are there people with impaired mobility who will have difficulty in reaching the assembly point within 2 minutes? If so:
   5. Write a PEEP. If possible, ensure the employee in question is located close to a fire exit.  Once a person leaves through a fire exit, he or she will be in a protected escape route.  It is safe to stay in a protected route for up to 30 minutes (assuming the building is correctly protected – see Fire Protection).  For people with impaired mobility, you can provide an evacuation chair, commonly called an Evac Chair. 
   6. Appoint the required number of people to obtain the Evac Chair (which should be in the escape route nearest to the person with impaired mobility), open it, help their colleague into it (if necessary) and then carry and wheel the Evac Chair to the assembly point. The number of people appointed to do this will depend upon the size and mobility of the person they are helping.
   7. Conduct training so that everyone understands exactly what they have to do. There is specific training for lifting and moving an Evac Chair. The company supplying the chair can usually help with this.  This training must be repeated annually or whenever there is a change of personnel e.g. one of the team of appointed persons has to be replaced.
3. Are there other vulnerable people who require help in reaching the assembly point? If so:
   1. Write a PEEP.
   2. Assign a nominated colleague (or colleagues) to the person to help with the evacuation. Some vulnerable people become very anxious during an emergency so it is important that the nominated colleague is able to be reassuring and calm and get the person safely out of the building and to the assembly point.
   3. Conduct training so that everyone understands exactly what they have to do. This training must be repeated annually or whenever there is a change of personnel e.g. a nominated colleague has to be replaced.

Other possible issues to be resolved

4. Is it likely that your building will have visitors present? Or customers? If so, you have to make sure that they can escape easily during a fire or other emergency.
   1. If it is common for you to have visitors, they must sign a visitors book on entry and on leaving. This will be used as a register at the Assembly Point.
   2. The person receiving the visitor, or whom the visitor has come to meet, will be responsible for his or her safety in the case of an emergency. That means getting them safely out of the building and to the Assembly Point.
   3. If you are in a retail, leisure or hospitality business, you must make sure that when the alarm sounds, all these people can see escape signage from wherever they are so that they know which route to take to get to safety. It is usual to have Fire Wardens/Marshals in places where large numbers of people gather and they will sweep all areas to make sure everyone is out safely. Planning for emergency evacuations in such places requires specialist training not covered in this guide. Please contact YourHS.space if you require advice about this.
5. Did people leave by the main entrance rather than using the nearest fire exit? This is a very common problem. You need to know that all the fire exits were open and that everyone was able to reach a protected escape route quickly.  If people continue to use the front door, just let everyone know what happened and that you will be repeating the drill until you have everyone at an Assembly Point within 2 minutes. If necessary, get the Director to reinforce this message (unless it’s the Director who is the problem….).
6. We alluded before to people who refuse to take part in a fire drill and the need to find out why.  It is true that some people just like to be awkward, and the disciplinary procedure should be invoked in these cases: refusal to take part in a fire drill (or any emergency drill) is a breach of health and safety rules and should be dealt with accordingly.  But some people have other reasons for refusing to take part and the Competent Person should be tactful when teasing out the reasons why. People with hidden health problems don’t want to take part in case their condition is revealed. For example, a person situated on an upper floor and who always uses the lift because of a lack of mobility knows that he or she will not be able to exit the building within the required two minutes as the lift must not be used in an emergency situation. Because their main worry is of being embarrassed, it is very important that any person suspected of falling into this category is treated with discretion and understanding.  There may be other solutions: can the person be moved to a position on the ground floor, or nearer to a fire exit? There are some mental health issues which can also prevent a person from taking part in an emergency drill: PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) for example. Again, it is extremely important to handle such people with compassion and care.

Health and Safety Myth

When it’s wrong to use fire safety planning as a way of avoiding a potentially unpleasant discussion

A representative of a church told a member of the public to remove his child’s pram because it was a) causing an obstruction to a procession, b) contravening fire regulations, and c) a health and safety risk. When the representative was challenged about these “reasons”, she told him that she was a health and safety officer.

It isn’t clear whether the “health and safety officer” asked for the pram to be removed because of genuine concerns about evacuation on fire safety grounds or whether this was simply an excuse to remove a potential obstruction to a procession.