Adequacy of refuges and evacuation procedures

[Dinnertime Dave]

For anybody interested the link below is to a report summarises the findings from the consultation process into the adequacy of refuges and evacuation procedures. It makes recommendations for potential changes to regulations.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/adequacyrefuges.pdf

Now, I have sat on a disabled access group for 3 years and during the first meeting I asked the members about refuges and I was met with a dull thud. None of them knew of there existence or there purpose.  It could be argued that the building management will assist people when necessary and that there isn’t any need for disabled users of building to know about the existence of a refuge. I think differently.

Lets face it how many able bodied people would be happy to sit in a disabled refuge not knowing what was going on?  

Some of the comments made by disabled users regarding their treatment are horrific.

[Ken Taylor]

The proposals from this document seem to highlight what we already knew and (as is often the case) propose further research.

• to include management of egress in the fire risk assessments required under the Fire Precautions (Workplace) (Amendment) Regulations 1999i;
• to create and promote the optimum design for evacuation;
• to measure the impact of the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (Amendment) Regulations 2003 on management procedures;
• to research the relative effectiveness of different methods of vertical evacuation.

Hopefully this will lead to better things.

Is anyone accepting FRAs that exclude egress management?

[Redone]

I've included egress management last week at a care home that has purchased a 'stair climber'.

Following a drill...

The stairwell refuge was to small to accomodate the appliance and the residents as they arrived, so the staircase furthest from the incident was designated as the evac route with the adjacent protected corridor becoming the holding refuge, staff communicate with hand held radios.

[wee brian]

Egress management is a key part of the Order. I assume we are all at one on this?

[Redone]

Oh yes!

[Steven N]

Egress management is a key part of the Order. I assume we are all at one on this?

Totally
However the number of queries we still get suggests that lots of premises think it is the job of the fire service to rescue people they have left in refuges.

[AM]

Egress management is a key part of the Order. I assume we are all at one on this?

Totally
However the number of queries we still get suggests that lots of premises think it is the job of the fire service to rescue people they have left in refuges.

You also have the problem of operational crews telling building managers that they will get disabled people out.

[Steven N]

You also have the problem of operational crews telling building managers that they will get disabled people out.

I despair sometimes at what gets said out there!

[Dinnertime Dave]

I was recently sent a FRA as part of the Building Regs consultation that stated the fire brigade would rescue anybody in the refuge on arrival. I very politely told then that we could not guarantee anything of the sort and that their procedures needed to be amended.

I was given a right mouth full and told that they would be complaining to the CFO. Haven’t heard anything yet.

[Midland Retty]

Egress management is a key part of the Order. I assume we are all at one on this?

Absolutely

There's great confusion between the words evacuate and rescue out there in my experience.

Ironically one ex firefighter who became a fire safety trainer  after he retired was going round care homes telling staff they should evacuate imemdiately on hearing the fire alarms and service users should be left in their rooms for the fire service to rescue!

*slaps forehead*

[Paul2886]

Egress management is a key part of the Order. I assume we are all at one on this?

Absolutely

There's great confusion between the words evacuate and rescue out there in my experience.

Ironically one ex firefighter who became a fire safety trainer  after he retired was going round care homes telling staff they should evacuate imemdiately on hearing the fire alarms and service users should be left in their rooms for the fire service to rescue!

*slaps forehead*

Oh how familiar this sounds to me. Afraid a lot of confusion is created by fire crews giving ill-informed advice regarding this issue. Whilst we probably know that attending fire crews would 'muck in' with an evacuation someone, somewhere, has to get the correct message across to care homes about their responsibilities regarding fire evecuation. As stated, aptly earlier, they evacuate, the fire crews rescue.
Care Homes should be made to explain their fire evacuation procedures within the glossy brochures they produce. This will give the relatives a choice of whether their parents are abandoned or there is a structured fire evacuation strategy in place. Bet there would be some empty beds in some pcare homes if this were the case. Come on CSCI enforce it.

[AM]

..and I'm sure some care homes are aware of the conclusions made by the coroner in the Redcar nursing home fire, discussed here:

http://www.fire.org.uk/punbb/upload/viewtopic.php?id=2190

[Redone]

I was recently sent a FRA as part of the Building Regs consultation that stated the fire brigade would rescue anybody in the refuge on arrival. I very politely told then that we could not guarantee anything of the sort and that their procedures needed to be amended.

I was given a right mouth full and told that they would be complaining to the CFO. Haven’t heard anything yet.

Had this a few times this year.  The lack of knowledge at some senior levels in care groups is very poor regarding the RRO and associated requirements, CLG, CSCI and FA's don't appear to have spread the message internally or externally.

[Midland Retty]

I was recently sent a FRA as part of the Building Regs consultation that stated the fire brigade would rescue anybody in the refuge on arrival. I very politely told then that we could not guarantee anything of the sort and that their procedures needed to be amended.

I was given a right mouth full and told that they would be complaining to the CFO. Haven’t heard anything yet.

Had this a few times this year.  The lack of knowledge at some senior levels in care groups is very poor regarding the RRO and associated requirements, CLG, CSCI and FA's don't appear to have spread the message internally or externally.

Slightly disagree with that

I can certainly say the FRA has been pushing it via Inspecting officers, letter campaigns etc.

As for CLG and CSCI I couldnt comment, but I think theres numerous factors here:-

Firstly we have got to stop wiping peoples bottoms for them. Ive heard many people say "we didnt get enough info" and the truth is there probably wasn't enough publicity to promote the new FSO, but even if there was you would still get people claiming not to of heard of it.

Senior members of any organisation should really take responsibility for finding out what their organisation needs to be doing to comply with the law.

Secondly information overload may play a part here - if you are at a senior management level you probably have 1001 bits of information coming at you from all directions, budgets, operational problems, meetings to attend, and all the rest of it, so when an area manager tells them that a fire officer has been round and talked about a new fangled thing called the Regulatory Reform Order it probably doesn't get absorbed.

This why a lot of larger organisations employ their own Health and Safety Officers.

[Redone]

For sure, Midland Retty not enough informative publicity before and certainly not enough after Oct 06 via prosecutions, you would have thought the various care monthlies that exist would have info of national fires that have occurred to benefit and educate their readers.

My experience of Health and Safety Officers, including local authorities, is that they don't consider fire safety part of their remit.  I've worked for companies with 230 occupancies throughout the UK who do not consider themselves to be a big company.

This size of organisation will buy in the fire expertise; I’ve seen a few FRA’s performed by national providers who send in a H&S inspector, that are way off the mark of being ‘suitable and sufficient’ referring to pre RRO fire legislation.

I can say that the effort of my FA is piss poor for life risk premises such as care homes, hotels and guest houses.  The few existing FPO’s want to get stuck into the risk premises, but they don’t set the targets.  With it’s focus this year to civilianize the fire safety department, I doubt if the knowledge or the will to put together a prosecution exists.