
Fire Prevention Week: Is Your Workplace Fire Safety Plan Up to Par?
A fire safety plan is a comprehensive document that highlights all the actions that employees and employers can take in the event of a fire at the workplace.
Design fire safety plans according to the laws provided by the Fire Code in your municipality.
Additionally, the law requires all workplaces to have a detailed emergency response plan for staff to follow when a disaster occurs.
A good fire safety plan will not only help in workplace fire prevention but will also increase your chances of surviving fires that occur at your workplace.
Therefore, fire safety plans are essential in the workplace because they can prevent injuries from occurring during emergencies. Also, having an elaborate emergency response plan eliminates unnecessary confusion when evacuating buildings.
What To Include In a Fire Safety Plan?
As the employers, design fire safety plans based on the layout of the building that they are in. That way, the employees will have an easy time understanding the contents of the fire emergency response plan.
Include the following in all fire safety plans:
The Action Taken After Discovering a Fire
Fires can start from anywhere in the workplace. As such, your emergency response plan should highlight the roles and responsibilities of each employee. In the event that they spot a fire, they must know what to do.
Most fire safety plans encourage employees to sound the fire alarm to create awareness.
What to do After Hearing the Alarm
After sounding the alarm, the people at the workplace should know exactly what they are supposed to do or where to go.
The best way to go about this is by conducting regular drills. Through this, the employees will have a quicker reaction time after when the fire alarm goes off. Clearly label emergency exit signs for those who may be unfamiliar with the building layout.
Calling the Fire Service
When designing a fire safety plan, including emergency numbers for alerting emergency services is a must.
Everybody at the workplace should be familiar with the procedure of calling the fire service.
Evacuation Procedure
There is a high chance that the employees will try to evacuate the building after they hear the fire alarm. To avoid stampedes and accidents, the fire safety plan should provide a detailed evacuation strategy that people can use.
The procedure should include the order in which people should move out of the building and the exits that they can use.
The fire safety plan should highlight all the escape routes that are in the building. This will prevent people from crowding a single exit.
Assembly Points
A fire emergency response plan should also include external assembly points that employees can go to after evacuating the building.
From the assembly point, you can check if everybody has made it out of the building.
Advanced Consulting & Training – Specialty Fire Safety Training
In addition to having a fire safety plan, employers should also have effective workplace fire prevention strategies and training on fire safety equipment.
Each building must have multiple fire extinguishers, and all employees must be taught how to operate them. At Advanced Consulting and Training, we offer a fire extinguisher and evacuation safety course.
If you are interested in having our teamwork with you on improving your workplace fire safety, contact Advanced Consulting & Training today!