Fire Evacuation Plan - A Guide to Surviving Fire Emergencies
- What do you do?
- How to create your evacuation procedure
- Fire safety signs
- How to be an effective fire safety warden
- What does an emergency evacuation plan look like
- Effective fire safety evacuation signage
- But which signs should you use in your premises
- Fire exit routes
- Fire equipment location signs
- What to do in case of fire signs
- What you need to know to be an effective fire safety warden
- What are the responsabilities of a fire safety warden
- What is the role of a fire warden during a fire incident evacuation
- How many firewardens does my business need
You are sitting at your desk, going about your workday.
You hear the fire alarm - you notice dark smoke, it travels across the ceiling faster than you thought possible....
…. you feel the heat of a fire out of control and people start panicking around you,
What do you do?
A nightmare scenario, and one that hopefully few of us will ever have to experience, but by being prepared with your own fire evacuation plan, adequate fire safety training and fire safety equipment, avoiding catastrophe is simple.
At Seton, we believe that avoiding injury to your employees and loss of revenue to your business need not be an arduous task. With preparation and forethought, you can avoid harmful events at work altogether. However, it is best to expect the unexpected and no matter how much you prepare, sometimes disaster is inevitable.
This is why we have created this guide to fire evacuation procedure, to show you exactly what you need to know in order to prepare for the unlikely event of a fire emergency at work. How to create your own fire evacuation plan, how to train your employees and the equipment needed to prepare, maintain and carry out your plan of action.
When you have read the guide below, you will have a complete understanding of fire evacuation procedures that will keep yourself and your employees safe in the event of fire.
So, let's have a look at the most important aspects of fire evacuation procedure and then dive into the details.
- What do you do?
- How to create your evacuation procedure
- Fire safety signs
- How to be an effective fire safety warden
- What does an emergency evacuation plan look like
- Effective fire safety evacuation signage
- But which signs should you use in your premises
- Fire exit routes
- Fire equipment location signs
- What to do in case of fire signs
- What you need to know to be an effective fire safety warden
- What are the responsabilities of a fire safety warden
- What is the role of a fire warden during a fire incident evacuation
- How many firewardens does my business need
How to create your evacuation procedure - A simple guide
Why is it important?
The consequences of not having an evacuation plan in place could be dire. We all know the dangers of fire, last year alone there were 316 fatalities due to fire in the UK (Home Office 2019 fire stats) with total casualties requiring hospital treatment at 3,755.
Fire at the workplace can cause chaos and confusion, depending on the building, its age and its construction, fire could spread quicker than you can ever realise.
Add into that the unknown factor of human reactions and panic; if your company is unprepared a once controllable situation can completely spin out of control leading to potentially deadly consequences.
Thankfully a highly detailed fire evacuation plan will mean that if a fire were to happen, you would have all of the tools at your disposal to calmly and efficiently evacuate the building, as well as radically decreasing the chances of serious harm coming to your employees.
The best place to start is by carrying out a fire risk assessment. We have a 29 minute ultimate guide to fire risk assessments and a plan template which is a must read if you are to create an effective fire evacuation plan. During the assessment take special note of places where fires could break out, these include kitchen areas, electrical outlets and poorly placed or neglected refuse materials.
Do not underestimate the destructive potential of fire for buildings. £1.3 billion was paid out for insurance claims pertaining to fire damage to property in 2018 (ABI Statistic).
Fire safety signs
It is now part of law that all work premises have to display adequate safety signage, this includes fire safety and fire exit signage.
As part of your fire risk assessment you will identify where to add fire safety signs and the best places to show routes out of the building in the event of a fire. These are essential as during the potential pandemonium of leaving a building during a fire, you won’t be able to think clearly. This is meant as no insult, panic affects everyone, and at these points of extreme pressure you will want to be able to act without thinking.
To this end, having fire escape routes and clear signage installed, with some form of photoluminescent component if possible, will ensure that anyone in the building, employer, employee or visitor will know where to go if a fire should occur.
Because this is part of law, fire safety signs have been created to fit in with every conceivable part of a building's structure, to help you easily display and comply with the law. They are available in materials that will enable you to affix them to almost any surface and have been designed to include a wide range of messages and simple pictographic images pointing in the direction of your escape route.
In this section you will learn where best to place your signage and the ways in which you can make it more effective.
How to be an Effective Fire Safety Warden
We have all experienced it. Getting on with your day, when the fire alarm goes off, causing you to have to stop whatever it is that you’re doing and go and stand outside until your name has been ticked off a list.
It is the cause of much eye rolling and tutting (especially on cold days) between employees and pretty much anyone who happened to be in the building at that point. But these fire drills serve a vital function, and whether you know it or not, one day, it could save your life.
Getting all of the correct fire safety signage and having all of the right fire warden equipment is a great start but without training and the right person to administer it, fire alarm drills and involvement from all sectors of a business, none of these things can be used effectively.
Businesses have a responsibility to ensure that adequate training takes place and that with this training, should a fire actually occur at work, everyone in the building will know exactly what to do and where to go.
But who carries out this training and how do they make it effective? Every company or organisation will have to designate a person to carry out the duties of a fire warden (this can be more than one person). And it is this person’s responsibility to organise fire drills, help others during those drills and in the event of a real emergency disseminate new information in the form of policy changes or new employees joining the mix, if and when necessary.
We will discuss insights into how to effectively create and maintain a fire training program and all the resources needed to carry it out. Also how everyone can help and be involved in making sure you stay up to date on fire safety legislation and how it relates to you in the workplace.
What does an emergency evacuation plan look like? Follow these simple steps.
With your fire risk assessment completed using our 29 minute ultimate guide to fire risk assessments, you will be armed with all the knowledge necessary to create a fire evacuation plan.
A fire is a life or death disaster, if one occurs in an enclosed space filled with hundreds of people, seconds will make the difference between life and death.
Luckily, you have it within your power to minimise the risk substantially. Let’s take a look at what you should consider when creating your own fire evacuation plan. Follow these steps to make sure you have covered everything.
1. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
When it comes to fire safety, anyone who has actually been in a fire can tell you that it is a terrifying experience. It is better to have prepared for a disaster that never happens than be caught unawares and suffer dire consequences as a result.
You will want to envision the primary areas where a fire could start and take into account the needs of the people that the plan is for. If you have any disabled employees, they will be a priority as well as visitors to your site.
Depending on what industry you are in there could also be other factors to consider. Offices with large amounts of electronics, paper and card. Warehouses with wooden pallets etc. All a fire needs is fuel and opportunity, consider the most at risk areas of your building and plan around those when drawing up your escape routes.
2. Plan your escape routes.
In any business, in any building, you will ideally have a primary and secondary escape route. This is a good idea because even with all the planning in the world a fire could start where you least expect it and block off all or part of your escape route.
With more than one route considered you will be able to effect a calm and orderly evacuation no matter the situation.
In larger buildings, displaying the map plan showing these routes is a must. When completed they will look something like this:
The routes you choose should be highly visible and easily accessible. Any entrances and exits on this route will have to have emergency locking mechanisms, fire door release mechanisms and security bars installed.
These have the dual purpose of making it easier for everyone to get out but also to help stop the spread of the fire.
3. Employees, assemble! Choosing your fire assembly point.
Fire assembly points are areas where your staff will travel to, temporarily, during an evacuation until the emergency has been dealt with. Choosing where your employees go is of the utmost importance.
Choose a well known area external to your building for evacuees to congregate. Depending on the size of your staff this could be several areas but they should always be areas that do not put your employees or visitors at risk and they should always be clearly marked, so that people will know where to go.
Things to consider are:
| 1 | If the area could be used by emergency vehicles responding to the emergency |
| 2 | If it is far enough away from the building to provide adequate protection from heat and smoke |
| 3 | That it is not located near any hazardous or flammable materials |
| 4 | That it is located away from general traffic routes |
| 5 | That it is not so far away that people will not travel to it |
Every fire assembly point should have a fire safety officer responsible for managing that area during emergencies and drills and they will periodically need to be reviewed, we will discuss this more in our fire warden section.
4. Check all equipment regularly
You wake up at 4am to an incessant beeping sound that happens just often enough for you to not be able to ignore it and go back to bed. I’m sure most of us have experienced this, the smoke alarm in your home needing its battery changing, needless to say in a business environment you cannot afford to get to this point with your own fire safety equipment.
Not only is it dangerously negligent to leave your fire safety equipment to gather dust, not maintained for months or years but during a real emergency you will wish you had spent the few hours it would have taken to properly keep everything in working order and up to date.
Regularly scheduling in checks of smoke alarms and fire safety equipment will be the job of the fire safety officer for your business or part of the building. Luckily a lot of fire equipment has built in features that notify you when they need servicing or batteries changing.
As part of the fire safety training, make employees aware of where the extinguishers are and their different functions - better to be over-prepared than not at all.
5. Communication, communication, communication
What is the point of an amazing fire evacuation plan if no one knows about it? As we discussed in the fire safety officer do’s and don’ts section, making sure your employees are kept up to date and aware of the fire evacuation plan is of paramount importance.
Displaying your fire evacuation plan map prominently, making sure all equipment is working properly and carrying out regular fire alarm drills and fire safety training sessions with all employees ensures that you have done everything within your ability to safeguard the lives of everyone in the building in the event of a fire.
6. Practice makes perfect
As mentioned above, regularly scheduling in fire safety training sessions increases awareness of the dangers of fires at your premises. It may seem over the top and laborious for some but ultimately it will be worth it. No one wants to have to face the day when they will be confronted by a fire, not at home and certainly not at work.
By carrying out fire drills, having employees act out leaving the building and gathering at the assembly points you are reinforcing exactly what to do in the real emergency scenario. They may not know it or even appreciate it but at the end of the day you are ensuring that everyone in the building will be safe and accounted for and not become another fire incident statistic.
With your plan in place you should aim to review it every year. Keep comprehensive documentation available and rest easy, knowing that if a fire ever does happen you will know exactly what to do.
Effective Fire Safety Evacuation Signage
In the panic and mayhem of dealing with a real fire, the last thing you want to be doing is to have to stand still and think about what actions you need to take.
If the fire is small enough, and can be tackled, you will need to know where your extinguishers are. If you are the first to discover the blaze, you will need to know where to raise the alarm and if you need to exit the building quickly and safely, you will need to have the route clearly marked so that it requires nothing except looking around to gather all of the information you need.
Fire safety signs need to be displayed in all business and commercial premises. This is UK law, as laid out in the Regulatory Reform (fire safety) Order 2005 and the Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996.
But which signs should you display in your premises?
There are many different types of fire safety signs, your fire risk assessment will guide you on where you need to install fire safety signs but there are many types of sign and finding the best one for the area is of paramount importance.
During a fire emergency you do not want to have to be looking around for your emergency exit route or for where the fire safety equipment is located. With signage in place you will see at a glance, in a split second, vital fire safety knowledge.
There are four main types of fire sign used in the UK
- Signs that mark fire safety routes, assembly points and fire doors
- Warning or prohibition signs that will make people aware of danger
- A fire action notice sign, designed to instruct on what to do in the event of fire
- Signs that point to the locations of equipment such as extinguishers and call points
Any fire safety sign is going to help in the fire evacuation process, let’s look at a few of the main types.
Fire Exit Routes
All fire safety signs are available in a photoluminescent material which will act to help them remain visible in low light conditions or if obscured by smoke.
Using photoluminescent strips and signs to mark an escape route from your premises will look something like this:
As you can see this will clearly show where to go in the event of fire emergencies.
Almost every fire safety sign we supply comes in a photoluminescent material option. Other helpful signage for marking fire exit routes and one that is essential and the law to include in all buildings is the fire exit sign.
These are not required to be over every door in the building but where escape routes are located and any doors that are not obvious for use as an exit, they are a must. Ask yourself how easily it would be for someone who has never been in your building before to find the exit during a fire emergency.
These signs can be used as simple statements of where fire doors are or with helpful arrows as well as legends to tell people which direction to head in, in an emergency. Fire exit doors need to be similarly demarcated.
These will usually be what are classed as mandatory signs, since they give an instruction that must be obeyed in order to ensure the safety of yourself and others from fire.
The last stop on any fire route is the fire assembly point sign. These are self explanatory and act as a visual guide for where to meet after evacuating from the building. They should be located prominently at your assembly point and easily visible to all.
Fire Equipment Location Signs
Primarily these are useful for display near or above fire extinguishers.
As you can see, fire extinguisher signs display vital information on the types of fires that the extinguishers are to be used on. All information is displayed in a highly visual format to help users make decisions in the moment. As mentioned in our section about How to be an Effective Fire Safety Warden section you should only tackle a fire if you are sure 100% that you can deal with it with the extinguisher you have to hand. If there is the smallest doubt, do not tackle the fire.
Other types of useful fire equipment safety signs are those that show the location of fire hoses and where to find fire call points. All of these signs can be fixed to walls and come in a range of materials that allows for display on almost any surface, flat or curved.
Every fire call point should have an accompanying sign and that is a good place to also display fire action notices signs as below
What to do in Case of Fire, Signs
These are Fire Action Notice Signs, and they display all of the most important information on evacuation procedures and the discovery of fire for visitors and employees.
They will display such useful information as:
- Where your assembly point is located
- The best exit to use in the event of fire
- Contact details for the fire brigade
- General instructions in the event of a fire
There are many different types of Fire Action Notice with many ways to display the information you want. Some have areas for you to fill in the specific details of evacuation from your building. These are fantastic as they can be updated immediately, should conditions change.
Every business and commercial premises has to display these notices and they are best displayed with your Fire Call Points and at the final exits of buildings via the pre-planned escape route.
As you can see there are all manner of signs you can use to enhance your fire safety procedures, complying with the law and helping others when they will need it most.
What you need to know to be an effective fire safety warden
The most important thing to remember for any fire safety warden is the 3 P’s
Preparation.Preparation.Preparation.
An oversimplification, but a useful one. As a fire warden, do you know the extent of your responsibilities? If you are not the fire safety warden at your workplace, then do you know who the fire warden is? Have they adequately communicated their evacuation plans with the staff?
If you have volunteered to take on the position of fire safety warden at your business, this is a huge responsibility.
The responsible person on your site will be the employer and you will work with them in order to come up with the fire safety procedures that need to be followed and that you have all of the fire warden equipment necessary to carry out the role in your workplace.
What are the responsibilities of a fire warden?
These are the main responsibilities that you will take when becoming a fire warden for a company. Larger companies may have several fire wardens that share these responsibilities.
- Creating a fire evacuation plan and updating it when necessary
After carrying out a fire risk assessment, follow our steps to create a fire evacuation plan to ensure you have covered everything. This should be updated/reviewed once a year. - Carrying out fire drills regularly and assessing employer performance
This has to be carried out at least once a year and the results recorded for inclusion in your evacuation plan documentation - If/when fires do occur, to help in the swift evacuation of employees and visitors
The most important aspect of the fire warden role; safety of the people in the building must be your primary concern - Check and maintain fire safety equipment on site
This will involve checking the function of fire alarms and the service dates for your fire safety equipment, such as fire extinguishers - Training new employees in fire safety and holding regular fire safety training
It is recommended that you hold refresher sessions once a year and it will be your responsibility to carry out inductions for new employees - Monitoring the storage of flammable materials
This will not apply to every fire warden but in offices you will ensure paper is stored in places where it will not ignite for example - Surveying signage to ensure that it is correctly placed and remains free from obstruction and tampering
Signs above doors and signs pointing to fire extinguishers and fire call points all need to be visible at all times. If you have floor markers, arrows or photoluminescent tape on stair cases, make sure this is free from scuffs and grime - Checking fire doors and door retainers
As part of equipment checks, make sure your Fire Door Retainers and Accessories are in working order and that fire doors are not partially obstructed from clutter - Ensuring that your fire escape routes are not cluttered with unnecessary waste and remain free from obstructions
While checking the fire doors you can also check the routes leading to those exits. Be on the lookout for these routes being used as storage and try to keep them clear at all times.
As you can see, once you have taken on the role initially and created your fire evacuation plan, it then becomes a case of simply ensuring that all of your fire safety procedures and equipment are properly maintained.
Hopefully you will never have to face a real fire but this is always an unfortunate possibility, and with the training and forethought that you have provided you will be able to enact your plans effectively.
What is the role of a fire warden during a fire incident evacuation?
You must make sure that your plans are understood and effective in guiding people out of a building in the event of fire. You are the one who will be guiding them to safety. Tackle the fire if possible and minimise risk from fire.
During an evacuation, real or practice, these are the things that should be at the forefront of your mind, that will make you an effective fire safety warden.
| Escape routes | When the fire alarm sounds, the first thing to check is that escape routes are unaffected by the fire. |
| Instruction | Offer instruction to people on where it is best to leave the immediate area, this will have been decided ahead of time in your fire evacuation plan map. Remember that it is best to plan two exit routes. If you are in a large group of people use a loudspeaker or bullhorn to get everyone’s attention. If panic begins to set in, this is a great way to re-focus attention on you. |
| Search | After everyone has left, if able, you should carry out a quick search of the floor or building (depending on what areas you are responsible for), check areas like kitchens, meeting rooms, toilets, anywhere a person may use to isolate themselves. |
| Minimise risk | While the evacuation is in progress, do what you can to minimise the risk of the fire spreading. Within reason, if the fire is out of control, in no way will you be expected to risk your own life. Close windows and doors to deprive the fire of air and stop the spread of smoke. |
| Fight the fire? | As mentioned above, no one will expect you to fight a blazing torrent of fire on your own. If you do find the source of the fire and you realise that it can be dealt with, with one of the extinguishers at your premises, then by all means tackle the fire. It is important to know the different types of fire and what extinguisher is best suited to putting them out. If you are not trained or aware of such things then do not tackle the fire. |
| Communicate with fire officials | If the emergency services are called in, communicate as much information that you can about your fire evacuation plans and the fire safety equipment you have installed in your building. If there are several fire wardens at your business then work together to make your fire evacuation go as smoothly and effectively as possible. |
| Go to your assembly points | It will be your responsibility to take a roll call and make sure that everyone is accounted for. Once out, under no circumstances allow anyone to re-enter the building until the fire has been dealt with or the drill is over. Inform emergency services if there is anyone not accounted for. |
By following these steps, you will have performed a perfect fire safety evacuation. Preparation pays off. Above all remain calm, you will be the person others look to in the event of a fire.
How many fire wardens does my business need?
It is important to know that any business, even a small business, should have at least two fire wardens. This is to cover sickness and holidays.
A good rule to keep in mind is that if it takes more than 3 minutes to evacuate the floor of a building, you need more than one fire warden for that floor.