Perhaps everyone’s worst nightmare is seeing a fire take over your property or business. Fire damage can cost thousands of dollars to repair and even worse, lives are often lost when a fire breaks out. Unfortunately, many commercial buildings, hospitals, and other multi-story buildings that have the most potential for lives and money lost if something goes wrong, do not have a safe and reliable fire safety plan, should an emergency break out. When 119 businesses were surveyed, only 35% of them had a real plan for evacuating safely during a fire. Those aren’t great numbers. You want to make sure that your building has a fire alarm system, a fire suppression system, and a fire sprinkler system — and that all of those are getting checked and repaired as needed. Fire suppression system repair can save lives and minimize the damage done before firefighters arrive on the scene.
What Structures Might Be Most In Danger?
Four structures that are most at risk for high-rise fires are hotels, hospitals, apartments, and offices. Indeed, hotel and motel fires are the cause of around 15 deaths and over 100 injuries annually and their damages run over $75 million in property loss. In 2010, fire departments reported going to 1,200 fires in hospitals. The good news about warehouse fires is that although their property damage costs are higher, there are usually fewer lives lost. Electrical malfunction, kitchen mishaps, and carelessness can all be factors for these kinds of fires starting.
What Measures Should Businesses Have In Place?
Businesses should have at least a combination of automatic sprinklers and early warning systems (like smoke detectors or commercial fire alarms). It’s predicted that having these present in all buildings could cut total injuries, deaths, and property damage in half! Having a fire suppression system is also important and making sure that you have regular fire suppression system repair occurring when needed is crucial to safety. Rooms that are below 2,500 feet are required to have Early Warning Fire Detection System (EWFDS) and rooms above 2,500 feet need a Very Early Warning Fire Detection System. Additionally, having a fire emergency plan complete with an evacuation plan is also important to saving lives and alerting fire department personnel as early as possible.
How Effective Are These Measures?
It’s been shown that in large commercial spaces with large oven ranges, suppression systems that don’t use chemicals are effective over 95% of the time. Additionally, between 2007 and 2011, the number of automatic extinguishing equipment available in hospital fires was almost at 80% — up by almost half from the period between 1980 and 1984. Early fire detection can also provide fire department personnel with a headstart on fighting the fire. If the detection system can alert the right people 10 to 15 minutes before the incipient stage, damage can be severely limited.
Make sure your building is protected with the necessary equipment. And remember: keeping your systems up to date and maintained is also important — fire suppression system repair plays a key role in keeping your building and lives safe.
