Overview - by Les Fielding
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Les Fielding MIFireE, MIFSM
NFSN Secretary
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Fire may start at anytime, anywhere, for reasons you do not expect! - Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus AD 15 - AD 68 (July AD 64, the Great Fire ravaged Rome for six days)
The government and fire community do much to educate people to the dangers of fire in the home, where we sleep, work and in places where we resort. In the UK Building Regulations provide functional requirements to confine fire spread. However, this is not enough! Education cannot reach all parts of society and containing fire in a compartment is time dependent and will not confine a fire indefinitely, nor does it provide for the safety of the people, the contents or the fabric in that compartment. |
We should no longer expose our families, work colleagues, employees, customers, communities, businesses, environment, and economy to the ravages of fire. Control measures with the ability to do this have been available for over a hundred & fifty years - we cannot and must not wait any longer.
Now is the time to act to protect our families, communities, and environment from fire. We should provide adequate protection from fire for:
- Our families and homes and personal property.
- Houses in multiple occupation and other buildings providing sleeping accommodation.
- Institutions providing care – Hospitals and Care Homes.
- Our Schools and Colleges.
- Our Workplaces.
- Places of sport, leisure, and entertainment.
- Transport infrastructure where people are vulnerable to the effects of fire.
- The nations heritage buildings and national treasures and environment
We are unable to totally control the potential for fire or predict the likelihood of it occurring. Education and other control measures can be introduced to reduce the possibility of fire occurring, but nothing can be done to remove the risk of fire starting completely.
What we can do and indeed have the opportunity to achieve for all buildings where people live, sleep, resort and work is to introduce active control measures that have the ability to minimise the consequence of fire when it starts.
Fire sprinklers have the ability to do this in the vast majority of situations and where they cannot provide a solution there are other active control measures that can be employed effectively.
The National Fire Sprinkler Network is committed to working with others: Government – Local, National, and European, with the fire and construction industries and with other public sector and industry/business stakeholders to make our communities safer from fire by the provision of holistic and risk specific control measures.
Les Fielding MIFireE, MIFSM
NFSN Secretary |
