Important Office Fire Safety Tips You Should Know
When you take courses in occupational health and safety, one of the most crucial things that you will learn about is fire safety. A fire can start anywhere at any time and can be incredibly devastating to anything in its path. It can cause injury, loss of life and serious property damage within mere minutes.
As you will learn in your courses, fire prevention is extremely important within the workplace. It is crucial that everyone is trained in what to do if a fire occurs and your office should have an evacuation strategy that you have practiced and that is clear to everyone.
Fire Safety Tips
In addition to the basic fire awareness training that all employees will acquire when taking occupational health and safety training, here are some important office fire safety tips that you should know. Remember these tips for a healthier and safer workplace environment:
- Keep in mind that many things within the office environment can be fire hazards. Electrical equipment such as photocopiers, computers and fax machines generate heat, so monitor them closely.
- Avoid piling up combustible objects such as paper, magazines and books in stacks around the office on or top of printers and photocopiers. These materials will only serve to quickly spread a fire if one breaks out, so they should be stored properly instead.
- Try not to overload electrical outlets and put too many plugs into one socket, as this can lead to sparks and surges and can become a potential fire hazard.
- The office fire alarm should be checked and tested at least every six months. Also, your office should hold regular fire drills in order to practice evacuation procedures.
- Have frequent fire safety meetings where you can discuss fire prevention as well as review the evacuation procedure and check that everyone understands what to do in an emergency.
- Have a way for your employees to check in every morning, such as a sign-in sheet. When you evacuate, bring the sign in sheet and do a quick roll call to make sure that everyone has made it out of the building safety and no one has been left behind.
- Encourage your employees to count the number of desks from their own workspace to the exit, as they might need to find their way to the door in the dark. You can even practice evacuating in the dark during one of your fire drills.
- Make sure that all of your employees know how to operate a fire extinguisher.
- The exits and corridors of your office building should be completely free of clutter and other objects at all times. You never know when you might need to evacuate and you don’t want to have the way blocked by a stack of boxes.
- If you do have to evacuate the office building because of a fire, you should never go back in before the fire fighting professionals say that it is OK. There could be a number of serious hazards, or the building could be ready to collapse on top of you.
Fire safety training is incredibly important, you will learn all about how to prevent fire danger in the workplace. Pay close attention to these lessons, because they might just save your (or your co-workers) life one day.
Fire Safety Courses
- Fire marshal course
- Fire extinguisher course
- Basic fire awareness course
- NEBOSH Fire Certificate
- NEBOSH International Fire Certificate