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Fire Protection for Healthcare Facilities
Fire Protection for Healthcare Facilities 101
For a fire to start and continue, it requires fuel, oxygen, and a spark or source of heat sufficient to ignite the fuel. Considerable thought goes into how to separate one or two of these factors to prevent fires from starting, extinguish the fire immediately, or prevent a fire from spreading.
At the same time, fire protection plans move people inside structures away from the fire toward safety, while moving people with proper equipment and training to fully extinguish it toward the fire. These tasks can become very complex depending upon the location, size of structures, number of people inhabiting a structure, and building materials/stored materials within the structure.
Fire Safe installs, inspects, and tests equipment, and works with organizations to prepare communication and evacuation plans. The scope of these tasks keeps us hopping, since we service a variety of structures and businesses, from commercial and residential, to manufacturing and industrial applications. One of the most challenging sectors for fire safety is the healthcare sector.
Healthcare Challenges
Life Safety
- Hospitals and medical facilities often have large populations to protect.
- Hospitals and medical facilities house some of the most vulnerable members of society, from the very young to the very old. Many are immobile or unable to move quickly.
- Healthcare facilities are often multi-storied, complicating evacuation plans.
- Vulnerable people can be seriously harmed by smoke inhalation and the need for a sudden evacuation.
Property Protection
- Oxygen is extremely prevalent and often in constant use; disabling oxygen can get very complicated.
- Electrical equipment is also extremely prevalent and often in constant use.
- Record storage, pharmacies, and laboratories are also prevalent. Sprinkler systems are not always the best method of extinguishing a flame.
- Commercial kitchens are also quite common in hospitals, with an entirely different range of fire protection needs.
These are just samples of what complicates fire protection services in healthcare facilities.
Responses to These Challenges
What should happen in the event of a fire at a medical facility? There are very adaptive plans, depending upon many factors: 4 key principles have been developed for effective fire protection services for healthcare facilities:
Life Safety Principles
These keys ensure the safety of people while they are in medical facilities. They include:
- Building and fire code regulations that ensure equipment and infrastructure are in place during emergencies
- Enforcement procedures help facility staff maintain various equipment with visual inspections
- Inspection and testing of sprinklers, suppression equipment, detectors, alarms, and other equipment by trained technicians
- (Ensuring code enforcement is maintained will limit risk and liability. This is accomplished by ensuring people and property are safe.)
Notification Principles
- Clear internal communication to the staff, patients, and guests, without causing panic
- Clear external communication to emergency responders
- Education and training plans to ensure staff clearly understand fire emergency plans for particular spaces
Extinguishing Principles
- Plans that immediately extinguish and isolate the flame by bringing the appropriate extinguishing method to bear for the affected space. This might require hand-held fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, or (waterless) fire suppression chemicals.
Relocation or Evacuation Principles
- Helping staff develop those complicated evacuation plans. This might include relocating patients to safer places.
Fire safety protection services for healthcare facilities require considerable specialty training, planning, and development by facility staff and fire safety planners. Fire Safe is prepared to help you plan for your healthcare facility.
If you have questions about Fire Protection for Healthcare Facilities, we can help.
Call Fire Safe Protection Services today at 713-722-7800 or visit our online form, and we will be in contact as soon as possible about your Fire Protection for Healthcare Facilities questions.