The “Stress Relief” episode of The Office opens with the employees of Dunder Mifflin performing a fire drill. In the now infamous clip, anything that could go wrong went wrong. The characters were unable to escape, phone lines were down, people failed to remain calm, and systems failed to alert emergency personnel until manually triggered. While the sitcom exaggerated the problems, it emphasized the importance of such measures in institutional and commercial facilities.
There are over 100,000 nonresidential building fires each year, resulting in $2 billion in direct property damage, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Sean Mahoney, senior engineer, technical services division with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), says practice can make perfect when it comes to drills.
“Practice, and just be educated on knowing what to do,” he says. “People tend to think that the reaction is going to be like what happened in The Office, but it’s usually a pretty calm, collected thing. It’s just getting people to start moving, and once you practice something enough, then it’s a pretty simple thing to go forth with.”
When the fire alarm goes off, it is not uncommon for people to stay where they are because they do not sense immediate danger. Thanks to the increase in nuisance alarms, building occupants are more likely to ignore the sound. It is up to maintenance and engineering managers to fully train employees on actions they need to take when the fire alarm goes off.
“Most people are going to go out the building the way they came in because that’s what they remember,” Mahoney says. “The building codes know that, and that’s why we have to size our main entrances to support two-thirds of the occupant load. A lot of that is understood, but because people don’t realize where the other exits are, they don’t know how to be able to get out of the building. That’s why we have exit signage even if people don’t necessarily pay attention to that on a day-to-day basis.”
Fire and life safety is a full ecosystem because building occupants need to have some awareness. Codes and standards are designed to make buildings safe, and they only work to a certain extent. People need to be aware of their situations and understand their roles to keep themselves safe and prevent fires.
“We have a consensus-based codes and standards process that’s taking best practices and data from when fires happen, and we’ve built in all that knowledge into codes and standards to provide fire and life safety inside of our buildings,” says Jonathan Hart, technical lead, fire protection engineering with NFPA. “The number one thing is to make sure that buildings comply with those codes and standards.”
Buildings have long been built to meet codes and standards, but they eventually evolve as more people are introduced to it. Doors that were designed to stay closed often get held open, and places that were not supposed to be storage spaces become storage spots. The systems that were installed in buildings during construction were designed to interact and communicate because nothing stands alone when it comes to fire protection and life safety.
The leading cause of fires in buildings include:
“We kind of look at ‘How do we prevent fires from happening?’ and that goes to a lot of the housekeeping, best practices and training people on what’s safe and unsafe,” Hart says. “Trying to enforce protocols around things that aren’t supposed to be allowed doesn’t make anyone popular, but those are the things that help prevent fires from starting. That’s why we have to pay attention to sprinklers and fire doors and building maintenance. Just making sure that we’re constantly keeping an eye on the building and maintaining exit integrity is really one of the most important things.”
It is up to managers to ensure that the building isn’t being changed based on how it is used. Mahoney says that emergency plans must be updated regularly and occupants must receive training so they understand what they need to do in the event of an emergency. Managers should select key employees as safety captains to ensure that people are evacuating as planned.
Mahoney also recommends managers communicate with local fire departments and emergency services.
“You’re going to be reaching out to the fire prevention bureau or the fire prevention group and say, ‘Can we work together so we can properly prepare if there is an emergency?’ and so then the fire department can also prepare,” Mahoney says. Fire departments “have pre-incident plans that are usually on all of their trucks that tell them it’s this type of construction, these are the occupancies, or these are the hazards in the area. They get these pre-incident plans, and they can educate on what they need in an emergency.”
Mackenna Moralez is the managing editor of the facilities market and the host of the Facilities in Focus podcast.
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