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FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => Fire Safety => Topic started by: wee brian on October 09, 2007, 11:07:57 PM
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I've come across a few people struggling to evacuate a protected area of a care home in 2.5 mins. I was suprised to sse it as a clear "requirement" of the Res care guide.
This dont seem viable to me - why do I have to do it in 2.5 mins - What's the national anthem got to do with fire safety?????? what are you guys all doing with this?
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The 2min. 30 secs. as we know is unachievable ! The original draft to the RRO Resi care guide had it as '50 seconds' ie the 1/3 of 2min. 30 sec. as being actual 'evacuation time', because the 2.30 includes going to the panel etc. to locate the fire and detailing staff to different tasks etc. Why is this guide the only guide that has a time set down ? I believe the other guides don't mention it ( you would think the RRO healthcare document would have it in as it is similar occupancy, but because the gentlemen of the DoH have more sense, it is not in ). I believe there may be link to a BSI publication written by Dr Don Christian on MoE in care premises for older people & children, but I have lost the copy I had without studying it in enough detail ( I know hindsights a wonderful thing, if anyone has copy please email it to me). Do you think there is a degree of 'suppression by stealth' to aid the the governments IRMP provision of fire cover ? Call me cynical, sorry its an age thing !
I believe that a year on from the introduction of the legislation, the government department that issues the guides and recieves information on how it is being administered in the country, and how it affects the population and fire authorities, now needs to issue enforcement guidance that deletes the 2min. 30 secs. Many well trained and experienced fire authority officers agree that it is unreasonable, some of the others are quoting it as a 'rule'.
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Yes 2.5 minutes is totally unachievable. You could have Geoff Capes with two residents under each arm running around and still not be able to evacuate a compartment within that time.
I normally state that 6 or 7 minutes is reasonable but there must be staff available to meet and greet the fire brigade on arrival
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consensus so far - any more?
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Agreed, It takes us about 3 minutes to hoist someone from bed to chair (you cannot lift everyone!).
We have reduced the size of the compartments for immeadiate evacuation by installing additional FD30S in the corridors, we aim to clear the reduced compartment in half the specified life of the fire door, for us 15 minutes.
We open the door for the fire service, there's a walkie talkie by the fire panel, they come in, pick it up and talk to the staff dealing with the incident. plans are at the panel for the fire service.
Luck so far, not got any Very High Dependency!
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Agreed 2.5 minutes is 'Pants' to use a technical term. As Clive correctly points out it is a little less wacky than the 50 seconds idea in the earlier drafts!!!
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Consensus achieved.
But should they have left out any indication or target altogether? Surely based on the standard design and layout it is appropriate to indicate some reasonable benchmark for RPs to aim for?
We do have guidance for defend in place- one hour FR and support for the occupant. So if its ok to stay put and not evacuate at all with one hour FR, where there is 30 minute FR 2.5 minutes for evacuation does appear to be disproportionately fast.
I reckon Redone has it about right.
It may have been better to have broken the fire actions into stages-
1- time to investigate alarm- 1.5 minutes
2-time to attend location and make safe (check doors closed and identify key priories and persons at risk)- 2.5 minutes
3- time to call fire service- 3 minutes
4- time to evacuate persons in immediate danger- 5 minutes and 3 minutes per person
5- time to evacuate others- 15 minutes
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If I had known we would all agree - I wouldn't have asked the questions - thanks guys...
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It is interesting how we interpret things.
I have understood/interpreted the 2.5 minute rule as the ideal and as the guidance says (p70) "the ability of staff to conduct an evacuation of each protected area in 2.5 minutes.....is a starting point". So the 7-15 minutes times that have been mentioned would be aceptable as long as it could be justified to the fire authority if asked - as I interpret it.
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Its a question of keeping these ideals or targets in touch with reality though. Looking at the scale of variation suggested here either the target is wrong or we are all to blase about it.
2.5 minutes to 15 minutes is a huge range- 600% variation.
Like saying the maximum travel distance in a dead end corridor in flats is 7.5m but if you can justify it to the fire authority it may be extended as far as 45m? No chance (though I could show you a couple of those..)
Like saying the ideal salary for a non uniformed inspecting officer is £130K but most of you will be paid about £21k.....
The guidance lets us all down if its advice is detached from the real world
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Here's the breakdown Kurnal...
Time to investigate alarm - always, always inside one minute. That's the target time. This has only been achieved with repeat panels, L1 system, giving precise location, and staff training, giving the staff the confidence to read the panel and go off and investigate. For info we acheive attendance at the actuated alarm in between 17 and 50 seconds. Back up, seniors arrive within the same time frame.
Investigating the room is done straight away on arrival, no hesitation, requesting the fire service is the first instuction given by the initial investigator to the next person to arrive, then the hand over to the senior, whose only role left is decide evac or stay, which ever is safe/required. Which should be done in whatever's left of the 15 minutes.
Tackling the fire is the staffs choice based on what they find.
With the homes on line, we actually put the call through to the fire service via the 999 as part of our training, call lasts about one minute. Had a scare last week as the operator put us through to the police by mistake! Travel time about 30 seconds.
It's taken sometime to get there... It works during the day when you've got the staffing levels.
We manage to clear the compartment with night staffing levels, but only because we have made them smaller.
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Thanks Redone thats useful.
Do you have stable well trained staff all the time or do you rely on agency staff to fill the gaps?
If so do they have any induction - most dont.
Your control room making the call to the brigade takes a big load off the staff- one fatal fire in a care home I attended - one of the two staff were held up 4 minutes on the phone to the brigade, I knw cos as part of the investigation we took the tapes from the control room. Another fire I remember involved agency staff who did not know the address of the home and had virtually no command of English and when they set the kitchen on fire at 3 AM it took 45 minutes to trace the call.
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All the guides appear to have been produced by reference to a collection of earlier documents with the final text being an edited version of the compilation omitting and adding as thought appropriate to the circumstances of the type of premises and their use/occupancy. The various references to the 2.5 mins in the res care version seem somewhat familiar to me from earlier general publications on the subject. I suspect that, whereas the editors had the 'sense' to delete the times from the text of the other guides, they failed to do so in this case and it went without sufficient challenge through the consultation process. Perhaps someone involved in that process could advise us in that respect? It certainly seems incongruous to include this time in the ways in which it appears in a document that also clearly describes the three different types of evacuation, discusses the problems, suggests establishing evacuation times by practice, etc. Unless this aspect of the guide is revised, I can envisage the 2.5 mins being used by the legal profession to argue for negligence, inadequate staffing, etc at some future occasion. Traditionally we have made a distinction between residential care and nursing care but, with many undertakings including a mixture of both types of resident, I suppose that the guidance drafters thought it best to have the one inclusive document. Whilst some small and purely residential compartments may achieve the 2.5 mins the likelihood of this being applicable to those with persons requiring guidance or any measure of personal assistance to evacuate is rather remote to say the least.
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Surely the really important issue is that as fire safety consultants and practitioners we need to robustly demonstrate the adequacy of any proposed solution. This can be particularly difficult where it deviates from prescriptive guidance despite all being in agreement that it is unrealistic and largely unachievable.
As someone involved in the revisions to Firecode, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to move the guidance away from its precriptive format to something more performance based. The greatest hurdle we faced was justifying any performance criteria we set. As authors of guidance we felt it incumbant upon us to ensure that performance targets being set in guidance documents needed to be demonstrably realistic, achievable, sufficient and justified.
I guess I am asking the authors of the Res. care guide to justify the 2.5 minute performance criteria. Where is the body of documented evidence to demonstate that such a perfomance is reasonable, achievable, not unduly burdening etc?
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Oh dear it would appear that I've killed this thread! Did I inadvertently fart or were my comments so outrageous that no-one deemed it worthy of debate?
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I guess I am asking the authors of the Res. care guide to justify the 2.5 minute performance criteria. Where is the body of documented evidence to demonstate that such a perfomance is reasonable, achievable, not unduly burdening etc?
I don't think they can Colin basing the EVAC time for a ResCare home on 2.5mins which is based on how long it takes to play God Save the King in Scotland in 1911 is a tad daft....but that pails into insignificance when you look at their latest publication.......mooooooo!!
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I agree it is bloody daft, but surely the industry, enforcement authorities and their political masters should be applying pressure upon those tasked with leading the way through guidance to at least produce something that is based upon a grain of reality and have some justification. Otherwise, how can we, the enforcement authorities or their political masters reasonably expect anyone to provide a justifiable solution to a fire safety challenge? If the guidance is so completely unfounded then surely we are in danger of crap in and crap out and we all amble along in blissfull ignorance until the next big conflagration!
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Colin,
I contacted the CLG to ask, why the 2.5 mins was not in the healthcare guide, and to clarify why it was in the resi-care guide as it would always be stick to beat us with should anything go wrong, the answer received was ;
""Residential care premises present particular fire risks. They typically combine a highly dependant population with an unpredictable fire loading that is similar to a domestic environment. Whilst the population of healthcare premises often have a similar level of dependancy, there is much greater control over the materials brought into the premises by patients compared to permanent residents in a care home.
The 2.5 minute period is not intended to be applied rigidly. The ability of staff to conduct an evacuation of a protected area within 2.5 minutes is a starting point upon which to make an assessment. This would be typical of an area where residents do not need to be physically moved by staff. In situations where residents do need to be physically moved then staff should be given the necessary training and equipment to do so.""
Shouldn't a well managed care home should have control over what comes into it ?
I don't think the guide implies that 2.5 min. is for the residents that basically evacuate themselves, and a higher figure is satisfactory for others. If 2.5min. is a satisfactory starting point time, when in their opinion does the time become unsatisfactory ?
I think the above does not really help, as the figure is in the document and is being quoted by fire authorities without justification already.
I think we need as an industry to lobby the CLG to get clarification or have it removed.
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I still tend to the view that, as the 2.5 mins has historically been related to self-evacuation by ambulant persons, it's in the Guide from that perspective and consideration of the issues of assessment and evacuation from nursing residential care has not picked the inclusion up in the consultation/editing process. At the very least, the Guide needs revision to clarify the point - even if they insist upon including a 'baseline'.
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If I remember back into the dim and distant past, I seem to remember that the Green Guide (The Draft Guide to Fire Precautions in Existing Residential Care Premises) allowed sub-compartments with up to 10 beds (12 in the case of purpose built premises) where no fire resisting seperation was required between bedrooms or between the bedrooms and the corridors. There was only seperation (of 30 minutes) between the sub-compartments themselves. (although in practice the corridors and bedroom doors were usually FR)
I think that in that situation it would have been sensible to aim for the lowest evacuation time possible, afterall we know that if a fire was to occur it could easily take out that sub-compartment completely within 2.5 minutes (worst case scenario, with all the bedroom doors being left open and residents bringing their own bedding etc into the home).
The current guides show and ask for fire resisting seperation between the bedrooms and the corridors in every case and in addition for self closing fire doors.
If this is the case then the fire will not (theoretically) break into the corridor for at least 30 minutes (assuming that the fire starts in a bedroom or store room, and not in the corridor where there should be no fire hazards), which should give the staff adequate time to evacuate the sub-compartment. In this situation the 2.5 minutes quoted is simply ridiculous.
I worked as an Inspecting Officer covering Residential Care Premises for several years and would never have dreamed of expecting them to evacuate a sub-compartment within 2.5 minutes, the 30 minutes FR is surely there to provide a greater period for vulnerable service users to be evacuated.
If you do get an overzelous Enforcing Officer use the old chestnut of on average 20% (it may even be higher than that) of the residents are likely to die if they are forced to move home. Not a nice card to play but it may draw them back to the reality of the situation.