Safety

Building Fire & Safety Regulation 2008 and AS3745 Planning for Emergencies in Facilities states that businesses must have evacuation signs and diagrams and stipulates what must and what could be on the diagrams.

One thing to note though, is that diagrams do not expire.  There are some companies who put a validity date on the diagrams and they use this as an expiry date.  Diagrams DO NOT expire!  However, you must on an annual basis as part of your Emergency Planning Committee Meeting verify that the layout of the building has not changed.  The only time that you need to change the emergency signs and diagrams once created is when there has been a material change to the layout of the building.

Some of the companies that create emergency signs and diagrams also include things such as desks and movable equipment.  As these are movable then it is likely that the layout will change due to a business’s growth and that gives some of those companies an excuse to redo the diagrams.  Only walls and fixtures such as benches and pallet racking that are secured and fitted into the building need to be on the diagrams as they may impact the egress routes.

If you want professionally rendered evacuation signs and diagrams without the BS from other companies, The Answer is Yes has an online course that can walk you through on marking out your emergency signs and diagrams and if you choose we can have them professionally rendered for you.

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But are they stupid?

Over the years as a fire auditor I, have seen the good, the bad and the truly ugly evacuation Signs & Diagrams.  Truthfully the worst ones I have seen were in child care centres. People often create emergency signs & diagrams with no understanding as to the purpose of fire evacuation signs and diagrams.  I even had a firefighter (also a fire trainer) say to me that he thought that having fire evacuation signs & diagrams at the door was stupid because once they got to the door they just needed to step out.  This is often the attitude of many business owners and think everyone can see the doors so all they need to do is get out.

I then explained to him, what if you got to this door and it was blocked, and you could not get out.  The evacuation signs & diagrams would tell you the next best alternate exit from where you currently are.  He had a moment of clarity!

January 2017 Bernard Gore died in Westfield Bondi Junction while trying to find his way through a labyrinth of self-locking doors and confusing exits at Westfield shopping centre.  In the article, it mentions other people had gotten lost in this building.

Other reasons to have emergency signs & diagrams

I went on to say to him sometimes you may want to know where the fire equipment is; where the emergency cut off valve was for the gas and electricity.  Or someone calls the emergency services and they can’t remember the address, they could read the address on the evacuation signs & diagrams.

The evacuation signs & diagrams can also be used by the Chief Warden to show emergency services where on the diagram someone was last seen so that they could go directly to that area and not have to sweep every room looking for a missing person.

Or what if it is a siege situation and the police could use the evacuation signs & diagrams to know the layout of the building?  I asked him wouldn’t it be useful if the evacuation signs & diagrams marked where all the dangerous chemicals were in the building?

Legal requirements regarding evacuation signs & diagrams

Legislation states that businesses must have evacuation signs & diagrams and stipulates what must and what could be on the diagrams.  Qld changed the Building Fire Services Regulation and buildings less than 300m2 diagrams are no longer required.  However, it still stipulates in AS3745 Planning for Emergencies in Facilities that all businesses must have evacuation signs & diagrams.

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I was working with a national client to implement consistent general evacuation training. A branch manager refuted the need for ALL his staff to do general evacuation training.  He insisted he only needed one chief warden trained.  His argument was that AS3745 states SHOULD do general evacuation training not MUST. Therefore he believed his staff did not have to do the training.

So it came time to do the drill.  It was a large warehouse with a showroom attached and upstairs offices and about 20 staff scattered throughout the building.

I said to the workshop manager “This is a fire drill, pretend there is a fire over there, what would you do?” He looked at me as if to say what the! Then said “I know! I go to the assembly area and he took off”… well, that had never happened before!

I told the showroom salesperson “this is a drill, there is a “fire” in the maintenance area, what do you do?” She said to me, “well there is no one in the showroom so I go to the assembly area” and she takes off! For real?

So I said the same thing to a warehouse worker.  He says to me “I am just a casual but if you want, I can go to the assembly area”, and he takes off”!

So what was wrong with this situation?

1. No one alerted anyone else that there was a problem. The people upstairs would have been trapped if there had truly been a fire in the maintenance area
2. No one closed any doors or swept any areas
3. No one grabbed the first aid kit
4. When I did get the Chief Warden to start the evacuation he did not sweep any areas, close any doors or stop more delivery drivers entering the premises.
5. They could not decide where the assembly area was as most thought it was in the middle of the driveway where emergency services would typically park.

For this reason, regardless of what AS3745 says I believe you MUST do general evacuation training for all staff.  QLD is the only state that says that ALL staff MUST do General Evacuation training every year and every two years they MUST do First Response Evacuation Training.

General Evacuation Training can be done as a face-to-face training course or it can be done online.

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What if you a computer caught fire in your office and you used a Dry Chemical Powder (DCP) Extinguisher instead of a Carbon Dioxide (C02) extinguisher.  There is no problem with using the DCP extinguisher except if the powder got into other computers. This happened to a company. The staff used a DCP extinguisher on the fire and put it out but the powder got into nine other computers.

Dry chemical powder extinguishers are also known as ABE extinguishers because they are capable of putting out class A (regular solid combustibles such as wood plastic), class B (liquid fuel fires such as gasoline), and class E fires (electrical fires). Using your DCP extinguisher on electronics will destroy your electronics.

How are your electronics destroyed by a DCP?

Dry chemical extinguishers can also be quite corrosive to metals such as aluminium and are also potentially abrasive.
Using the Dry Chemical Powder extinguisher, the powder, being fine like talcum powder got into nine other computers. So, the company put a claim in to replace the ten computers. The insurance companies denied the claim and stated they would only pay for one.

Why was the claim denied?

According to Legal Aid Qld on why insurance claims are denied… the damage was not caused by the disaster. The damage to nine other computers was caused by using the wrong fire extinguisher. Had the staff used a C02 extinguisher then the other computers would not have been damaged.  The insurance company would only pay for the replacement of the one computer that was damaged by fire.

What should they have done?

Had they conducted a full risk assessment then they would have determined that they had the wrong extinguishers, or had they consulted a qualified Fire Safety Adviser they would have been advised to install C02 extinguishers

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