Commercial Fire_4_Business Tips for Fire Preparedness
12/31/2019 (Permalink)
Commercial Fire_4_Business Tips for Fire Preparedness
As a successful business owner in Broadview, IL, you strive to be prepared for anything. When it comes to a fire breaking out, just having alarms and extinguishers is not enough. A fire contingency plan is a well-thought plan catered specifically to your business to ensure the safety of everyone on-site. Establishing a plan may also reduce the damage to a structure, speeding up the fire damage restoration process.
Establish Specific Roles
Along with establishing and mapping an evacuation plan, which should be posted throughout the building, it’s important that people completely understand what to do in case of an emergency. As part of the plan, assign key roles to specific people to help guide a smooth evacuation. These roles may include:
Assign one person to be the overall point person for planning, preparing and instigating the plan. This person should also be responsible for conducting a headcount at a determined safe location.
Since no one knows when a fire may break out, the main fire chief should have an assistant. They work closely with the main person to understand protocols. If both are on-site, the assistant can take responsibility for alerting employees and calling 911.
Depending on the size of the business, route guides should be available to ensure that set evacuation paths are clear and people can calmly exit the premises.
For businesses with multiple floors, assign a monitor to each floor to verify the area has been cleared.
Cover all the Bases
A contingency plan needs to be clearly communicated. Along with taking the time to ensure each employee knows how to use emergency equipment, it is also important to test the plan. Just like a school drill, businesses should conduct a fake emergency evacuation to ensure it works and see areas that may need improvement.
A contingency plan provides peace of mind that your most valuable assets, your people, will know exactly what to do in case of an emergency. Take the time to prepare and communicate to ensure your plan works.