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Fire Safety in the Workplace

Almost every industrial, commercial, and general workplace has the potential to deal with A fire at any given point during operations. Luckily, most people have never had to experience a fire related incident, but if you have you know the long-lasting effects it can have on all aspects of a business. There are many ways to prevent these types of incidents, like not overloading electrical circuits, ensuring that all flammable liquids and materials are stored away from ignition sources, proper housekeeping and cleanliness, preventive maintenance on machinery, designated smoking areas and finally proper signage and communication. If a fire does ever occur in the workplace, hopefully there are fire extinguishers that are accessible, and employees have been trained on how to use them. There are five types of extinguishers that exist: A, B, C, D, and K. The most common one found is a combination (ABC) extinguisher that can extinguish ordinary combustibles, flammable liquids, and deal with electrical-based fires. The general rule of thumb is to stay eight feet away from an active fire, and never turn your back on it even if you think it is extinguished. Contacting the fire department even after a small fire has been extinguished is very smart, there are hotspots in certain materials that could reignite over time. A widely used extinguishing method or acronym is called PASS: Pull, Aim, Squeeze and Sweep. This has been taught for many years and is very popular because of how easy it makes the process. One of the most important parts about a fire is understanding when it is too large for an extinguisher or individuals in the workplace to put out on their own. Once it exceeds the incipient stage, or the very beginning stages of the fire, is when evacuation of a building or area is necessary. Fires take too many lives in damage too much property, let us do our part in preventing fires in 2022 and if a fire does occur let us ensure that we are trained properly to handle it and understand our emergency action plan in the workplace. There is so much that we can do that does not take that much effort and can make a big difference.