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Posted By Jennifer Kelly
Had a query this morning and I cannot decide whether a valid point is being made or not.
Should a 9 litre fire extinguisher be placed in a standard 1st floor office environment if not everyone (a minority in this case) can lift said 9 litre fire extinguisher?
Have probably answered my own question but would be interested to know what others think.
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Posted By john r sharp
Jennifer
As you're company is required to train employees on the use of fire extinguishers, the weight of the extinguisher, and therefeore the lifting from the barcket, is something that you can deal with in the training. Failing that, you could swop them for six litre water extinguishers that have the spinneret in them, ie, when used they produce a spray rather than a jet of water. These have the efficiency of the nine litre versions.
Hope this helps.
John
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Posted By Gareth Williams
Jennifer,
A well known high street retailer employing
a large female workforce adopt the use of
4.5 L water type extinguishers to over come
the problem of user friendly equipment.
Obviously this means they employ double the
number of extinguishers at each fire point.
I trust they will be freely available
in the market place.
Regards
Gareth
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Posted By Derek Housley
Extinguishers are rated on their ability to knock out a fire ( 13a / 55b look at the markings on the extinguisher ). So therefore a 5.5 litre AFFF ( aqueous film forming foam ) extinguisher will have the same 13a rating as a 9 litre water extinguisher.
So that for reasons weight it possible to change extinguishers but still have the same fire fighting ability.
Hope that helps
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Posted By Cathy Ricketts
I work with a predominately female workforce and issues around manual handling and the ability to manouvre a fire extinguisher into position are a reality. We induct everyone into fire safety however only the fire wardens are trained in fire extinguisher use. This is included in our risk assessment and the fire officers who have visited and the insurance company (after some argument that the risk of a manual handling claim was higher than the risk of a fire) are happy. In offices which are too small or part-time and therefore dont warrant a fire warden more emphasis is given to fire safety training. All offices run regular evacuation drills and we have worked towards reducing risk by including things like fire proof letter boxes in design of new premises and ensuring that there are clear areas inside premises that might be an arson target, all electrical equipment is tested etc.
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Posted By shaun mckeever
Cathy, just a personal viewpoint.
I do not normally recommend fire marshals/wardens be given the training in fire extinguishers since I see their role in the event of fire as co-ordinating the evacuation rather than tackling the fire. I found your approach adopted by an organisation who had an incident when I attended as a fire officer. When I asked if everyone was accounted for I was told that the fire marshal who should have cleared the floor had gone to tackle the fire. This left me not knowing if the floor had been cleared.
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Posted By Cathy Ricketts
We get round this because we have more than 1 fire warden and our exit routes are fairly straight forward (with one exception) - also have excellent signing in and out systems with full management support (they actually audit them un prompted by me)- I dont have much option to work any other way as the uproar of suggesting that everyone was trained in fire extinguisher use was too much even for me too many people with manual handling issues and other reasons for not lifting an extinguisher - dont even go there!!!. Where we have visitors/public on site then the person they are visitng is responsible for evacuating them. Our key policy is evacuation - get out and stay out. We also have a proper fire training school near to hand where the fire warden can go and play in smoke rooms and put out lots of real fires and real firemen. Our highest risk is actually from arson when the centres are closed. I know from the fire drill reports that I get back that those in the building are leaving and are present and correct at the roll call
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Posted By Jennifer Kelly
Thanks very much to all of you - came back to find all of these very useful and practical answers which have provided me with excellent information.
Now where is the fire extinguisher brochure???
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