Fire Safety… Why?

After spending years in the fire service and fire safety I still find it unfathomable that people and companies see fire safety as an after thought. I must at this point say that all companies and people cannot be tarnished with the same brush, but more often than not we are asked to visit sites and businesses at the end of a project or once they receive the damming letter off their local fire and rescue service.

But why you might ask? Don’t worry I’m not about to start preaching to you because I don’t know the answer either.

I do however have some thoughts!

Fire safety is something we must have to work and live in relative safety but it’s not something we truly want, unlike the new pokemon go app. That’s my first maybe, a little negative thought.

What about people or businesses that have experience a fire, surely they will want to be proactive with fire safety? Well I’m sorry to say you’d be wrong. The amount of companies we have and continue to work with that have seen the damage and devastation caused by fire yet still see it as an unnecessary cost to the business to upgrade a fire system or impliment some type of formal training program.

Architects and planners must shoulder some of the blame for not consulting or considering the full impact of not designing systems and life safety aspects when new builds take place. Some of this is down to customer lead budgets and the need to try every track in the book to avoid installing expensive systems when a cheap under specified one will do. It’s the old put off today what can be done tomorrow statement.

I’ll leave you with this recent trial and tribulation..