Nearly 40 Pct of Visitors to Hospitals, Office Buildings Lack Awareness of What to Do In Event of Fire

In hospitals, nearly 40 percent of employees are unaware of fire evacuation procedures. This represents a serious life-or-death situation because hospital employees are accountable for evacuation of patients and visitors. The situation isn’t much better in commercial buildings. Nearly half of employees working in shopping malls and more than half of office workers were not aware of fire evacuation procedures, signaling a simple opportunity to improve on worker and visitor safety at these facilities. And the situation gets much worse in homes: 85 percent of the respondents said their home residence lacked a fire alarm system or detection device.

“To avoid catastrophic situations due to a fire employers and building owners need to have appropriate fire alarm systems, and also conduct regular training for employees and have appropriate signage in place for visitors,” said Harish Vellat, Regional Director, Honeywell Life Safety (HLS), India. “While almost all of those surveyed said they had fire alarm systems in place, there is a deep lack of awareness of the steps that should be taken if a fire or other critical issue occurs.”

As a leading provider of fire systems, Honeywell Life Safety, in consultation with Mr. D K Shami, offers the following tips to help facility owners and individuals know what to do in the event of an emergency:

For facility owners: 

Create an emergency preparedness plan for your facility and ensure compliance with all fire protection and fire safety requirements;

Regularly test fire emergency systems;

Conduct regular training and mock exercises of evacuation with your employees;

Ensure your emergency exit signage is posted, clearly visible and prepare for visually or hearing impaired individuals;

You can get custom signage created for all purposes at https://www.tradesignshop.co.uk/

In addition to a basic fire alarm, consider integrating your building’s fire, lighting, security, HVAC building controls into a building automation and management system to provide additional levels of safety and security.  

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