Fire Safety: Common Mistakes

Protecting employees and the workplace from fires is an important job—too important to let anything fall through the cracks.

 

Robert Solomon is division manager for building and life safety codes for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). He leads a team of engineers who develop and update NFPA codes, conduct fire investigations, and are involved in emergency and nonemergency movement of building occupants.

 

When it comes to workplace fire safety, Solomon says several things can fall through the cracks.

One is the need to regularly remind employees what they are expected to do. Refresher training should include basics like sounding the actual building fire alarm so that workers know what it sounds like, and identifying the two closest exists.

Another mistake is not training employees to deal with the real-life situations they may have to face in the event of a fire. Solomon uses the example of employees in high rise buildings. He reminds employers to encourage employees on upper levels to occasionally walk down 8 or 10 flights of stairs, recognizing that they may have to walk down 50 or more floors in an actual emergency.

"The time to learn you're going to encounter a difficulty," says Solomon, "is when you have the time to deal with it, not during an emergency.

 

"The same kind of thinking applies to other fire-related situations, such as smoke, exit routes blocked by flames, encountering hazardous vapors, etc.

 

Other Mistakes

 

Other common mistakes employers make concerning workplace fire safety include:

 

• Not having a well-developed and frequently reviewed fire safety plan
• Not properly instructing all employees about the plan
• Not conducting fire drills (or not making them a surprise)
• Not training employees to use fire extinguishers if they are expected to use them in the event of a fire
• Not training employees about when to fight a fire and when to evacuate

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