Fire Safety and Emergency Fire Training

There are different aspects to fire safety training. WH&S legislation mandates this fire safety training requirement to the person conducting business or undertaking a work place. Primarily safety starts from Duty of Care towards employees and the occupants of the building.

It is further enforced by relevant laws, acts and regulations. In terms of Fire and Safety planning and training at Workplace, it is required by Work, Health and Safety Act 2011 and Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 that necessary arrangement is to be established within the business for safety of employees and occupants.

Almost all buildings need to be installed with basic fire equipment like fire extinguishers and hose reels. These are considered to be front line of defence. These measures are designed and installed with an idea that the occupant within the building will be able to use it with some basic training.

Fire and Emergency training has two important facts:

• Fighting the fire

• Evacuating safely

Why is fire training so important?

• First of all, it is important to know whether the nature and size of fire is within one’s capacity to extinguish.

• Once it is decided that an attempt is to be made, knowledge is required to assess whether there is right type of fire extinguisher for the particular nature or class of fire. If not, there is no point in pursuing.

• Even if the right type of extinguisher is available, one should learn how to pull out the pin, discharge and spray at the fire to effectively extinguish the fire.

• There are other procedures, formalities and things to be cared about once the fire has been put out.

How to Evacuate Safely in case of emergency?

In an emergency, if the decision has been made that the fire is too big to be fought, then it will be decided that evacuating the building if the safest option.

In that case, there will again be numerous things to be considered before, during and after evacuation:

• Procedure to alert others.

• Procedure to evacuate.

• Procedure to inform emergency services (like fire brigade, ambulance etc).

• Procedure to assemble at an assembly area etc.