Morning all - I work in the 3rd sector and my charity has just decided, following a review of policy to state within the Fire Evacuation Policy/Procedure "to evacuate the building rather than fight fires". We have trained fire wardens to accomplish this procedure. It further states no-one "even if trained in the use of fire extinguishers will fight a fire" as the number one priority of staff is to assist clients to evacuate the building. We have clients of all ability and ages and some wheelchair users. Therefore can I remove the fire extinguishers? I seem to remember that there is no legislation to say you have to them, only that if you do, you have to annually maintain them and correctly site them etc. Thanks as always for any help and advice.

With the caveat that I do not know what your operations are, I would strongly recommend that you do NOT remove any extinguishers. Regardless of the well intentioned ideas your employer has to sustain life by immediate evacuation, there will almost certainly be circumstances in which an extinguisher will be needed to aid escape by knocking down a fire blocking an escape route for self or others. Your insurance company may also take a dim view of this and fire safety inspectors would do more than raise an eyebrow I suspect. I have come across the no-fire-fighting policy before and have always challenged it. None of us wish people to put themselves in harms way unnecessarily but at the same time do you wish to lose an entire location to a small waste paper basket fire that could have been put out by a quick squirt from an extinguisher? Providing that sensible instructions and training are given, small fires can be managed without significant risk IMHO. You state that you have trained fire wardens. Did their training includes the assessment of fires and the use of extinguishers? This is the level of training I would deem acceptable for most commercial premises for staff to assess and fight fires if they feel confident to do so, although I will gladly defer to with greater knowledge.

The question of the use of fire extinguishers has been raised on several occasions on the discussion forums. Section 3 of The Guide for a Fire Risk Assessment of Offices and Shops has the following paragraph ‘You have responsibility for the provision of appropriate firefighting equipment. It is also your responsibility to check that all firefighting equipment is in the correct position and in satisfactory order before the premises are used. Appropriate staff should be trained in the use of all such equipment. Training is also mentioned in clause 4.4 of Part 1 of The Guide for a Fire Risk Assessment of Offices and Shops. I have discussed the question of the use for fire extinguishers with a fire brigade officer who made the comment ‘If it is safe to do so why not extinguish a small fire, because if you do not and the fire spreads fire crews fighting the fire could be put at risk.’ So you have a small fire, it is not extinguished, you safely evacuate, the fire brigade extinguish the fire but not before a significant part of the building is destroyed; I do hope that you have a contingency plan for looking after your clients following such a disaster. While perhaps they could be exaggerated the fire extinguisher industry figures state that about 80% of fires are extinguished by a fire extinguisher without the intervention of the fire brigade. If you do not train staff and there is a fire someone is sure to ‘have a go’ with an extinguisher. It is better that they know which extinguisher to use and most importantly when not to use one and evacuate. On a fire risk assessment course I attended if you have sufficient staff the fire wardens should organise the evacuation and should not use fire extinguishers, this should be left to a separate team.

As a matter of interest if a person is going to use it to aid escape, and where obviously there is now a higher risk and more important reason to use it, how would you ensure they were competent to use it? The tendency is that where companies suggest people only use them to aid escape is that they do not properly train people any more, as they think it unlikely they will use them. On the other hand if we have given people proper training, and it is regularly refreshed, then does that not reduce the overall risks if they use an extinguisher in accordance with their training? Regards

I agree with the above posts that keeping the extinguishers and maintaining the training can only be good measures. I would also suggest that your company could review the fire risk assessment in light of their recent policy decision. For example, it is common practice, reinforced by standards that class A extinguishers should be placed adjacent to the final exits. If these extinguishers are to be used to create an exit in the case of a bad fire, this may not be the best place to locate them. It may be more in line with your current policy to position the extinguishers in the centre of long corridors where they will be accessible to use to create an exit if all are blocked.

Consider a London Underground train These trains carry 1000s of passengers in very long tunnels which represent travel distances measure in 100s of metres. Means of escape in tunnels is via a 500mm door then onto a dark track and occupancy densities can be astronomic. Within carriages people no longer smoke, but smokers materials including cheap gas lighters are plenty and each train may have contain 1500 mobile phones batteries. Plus discarded combustible free newspapers & Pret sandwich wrappers decorate the floor. But London Underground removed extinguishers years ago - with the blessing of The London Fire Brigade My point is, extinguishers are not a legal requirement. I know many of you will disagree, but it is most certainly all down to risk assessment. The Fire Safety Order states (my capitals) 13.—(1) WHERE NECESSARY (whether due to the features of the premises, the activity carried on there, any hazard present or any other relevant circumstances) in order to safeguard the safety of relevant persons, the responsible person must ensure that— (a)the premises are, to the extent that it is appropriate, equipped with appropriate fire-fighting equipment........... The 'where necessary' bit refers to the risk assessment. If you can justify not having extinguishers - the obvious example being the sterile staircase of a block of flats - then you don't necessarily need them

As a parallel to the rationale behind the removal of extinguishers from London Underground trains I recall that an experienced fire adviser (ex-fire service) colleague of mine advised some years ago that our employer's secondary schools could remove extinguishers from corridors and stairwells where they were prone to misuse by a small minority of pupils. The local extinguisher companies weren't too happy at losing some revenue alias money saved by the schools in not having to have misused extinguishers refilled or replaced. Also, I think some alarm call points in corridors which were vulnerable to malicious activation were blanked off. As some forum users might look askance at reading this, I should add that extinguishers and call points remained in supervised locations such classrooms and especially science laboratories, workshops, etc. with processes which posed some risk of fire where prompt extinguishing by trained staff of any fires which did occur would prevent them from developing and getting out of control. I know of at least several incidents in my former employer's secondary schools where staff tackled and extinguished small fires AFTER having first activated the alarm system to instigate an evacuation of the buildings involved. p.s. My apologies for not including any snippets of humour with this posting, mainly because I can't readily think of any to include.

Looking at the catalouge of errors, both by the Care Home Staff and the Fire Brigade, I fail to see the relationship between this and the original post.