In case of an emergency, do you know where the fire exits are located in your workplace?

If you answered “no” to most of these questions, chances are your company should rethink the fire safety procedures in your workplace. Often, we participate in fire (or earthquake) drills with our minds preoccupied by deadlines and upcoming meetings so that we dismiss these exercises as unimportant. But if a fire breaks out, do we truly know what to do in that situation? We spend a significant part of our lives at work (or in kindergarten, school, university and other institutions). According to an article published by Gettysburg College, an average office worker spends up to 90,000 hours at work, which is almost equivalent to more than 10 years!

In this week’s episode of Burning Matters, we discuss workplace fire safety. It is important to dedicate a blog that considers a topic that may be inconsequential to some but can have a massive impact to everyone, given that we spend a significant portion of our day at work.

For fans of The Office, the Fire Drill episode is arguably one of the funniest in the entire series. In this episode, Dwight Schrute simulates a "fire" in the office to test the characters' preparedness for a real fire incident. Chaos ensues as everyone scrambles to evacuate, only to find the exits blocked. While this scene is highly entertaining in the context of the sitcom, the sad reality is that the reactions are often reflective of real-life actions.

Fiction draws from real life. Case in point is how this restaurant worker tries to put out a grease fire.

For fire engineers, it is common knowledge (or perhaps not?) that water should never be used on grease or oil fires, as it can cause a steam explosion, spreading the grease and intensifying the fire. However, it is clearly not something everyone knows, as revealed by the large number of videos online, as well as from fire statistics. Add stress and tiredness to that, and even the ones that know might ‘blunder’.

According to FEMA, with basis in the the U.S. Fire Administration’s (USFA’s) National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), about 5,900 restaurant building fires are reported every year in the U.S., with deep fryers as the leading equipment involved in ignition.

The restaurant worker is not to blame! Like anyone caught in a fire incident, he acted on the information he had and made a judgment call (though a wrong one) to protect himself and others. Employees working closely with grease or oils should be taught via basic fire safety training not to use water on such fires. And, further to that, they should have the correct alternatives available. In a big kitchen as the one in the grease fire video, one could also easily argue that an automatic fire suppression system should be in place.

In an ideal world, contextual fire safety training is provided for all employees. More often than not, and it doesn’t come as a shock, fire safety in some parts of the world may be virtually non-existent. When the reality is that most employers would prioritize profit over safety, this could happen:

This video has sparked a lot of online debate about who is to blame: the worker who appears to have intentionally set the materials on fire, the management for not implementing fire safety measures and training, or legislation (or the lack thereof).

While the worker is under investigation to determine if this is a case of arson, the employer may be at fault if investigations reveal that the employee was not adequately trained in fire safety procedures or was unaware of the risks associated with their tasks. Employers may also be held accountable if it is proven that they have failed to comply with fire safety regulations and have neglected to provide adequate fire safety measures.

So far, we have discussed how the lack of safety training can worsen any fire situation, but there is ‘nothing more dangerous’ for any business than the mindset “we have always done it this way”. In the everyday hustle and bustle of our work, we rely on any tried and tested approach because why fix [a system] something that’s not broken?

In this display of bravado, an employee embodies this mindset:

It is all fine until it is not.

I say this because, at the turn of the century, novel technology is advancing at a staggering pace, outstripping our knowledge of how to address the challenges that arise from a fire safety perspective. An example would be the fire risks associated with rooftop PV installations as discussed on a previous Burning Matters post on PV’s.

How then can we change the “we have always done it this way” to

“Powerpoint is boring”, says Dwight as he attempts to simulate a real fire in the fire drill.

While Dwight's approach may be extreme, perhaps there is some truth in rethinking how we deliver fire safety trainings in the workplace. Studies conducted in the group of Enrico Ronchi at Lund University on utilizing virtual reality (VR) as a tool for safety training proved that participants performed better with a real fire extinguisher if they were first trained in VR. Employers can also organize live safety demonstrations where employees can experience using fire extinguishers.

In this week’s episode of Burning Matters, we can draw lessons from pop culture and real-life incidents to improve our fire safety practices. All of them mirror and reveal the ugly truth to the potential consequences when employees are inadequately trained. Changing the mindset for fire safety in the workplace is effective when both sides of the same coin—the employer and the employee—work in tandem.

So, pause and assess your workplace.

A little bit of situational awareness goes a long way.

Grunde

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