By understanding preventative measures and best practices for safety, you are well prepared to protect yourself and help others if needed during an emergency.
Preventing fires in the workplace is essential to maintaining a safe environment in the office. By understanding preventative measures and best practices for safety, you are well prepared to protect yourself and help others if needed during an emergency. Below are four easy ways to prevent fires and eliminate fire hazards in the workplace.
Designated Smoking Areas
Many employees in many different industries take smoke breaks throughout the day. If permitted by your company, ensure that your workplace has a designated smoking area to properly dispose of smoking materials such as lighters, cigarettes, or matches . These designated smoking areas should also be equipped with trash receptacles designed to safely dispose of cigarette butts. This will greatly reduce the risk of a fire starting in a smoking area.
Maintain Your HVAC Equipment
Heating equipment is one of the most dangerous potential fire hazards in the workplace. Any heating device such as a heat lamp, personal space heaters, furnaces or boilers can become fire hazards if they are broken or poorly maintained. Since HVAC equipment is designed specifically to produce heat, the risks that they pose as potential fire hazards should never be underestimated.
Cooking Equipment
If your workplace is a restaurant, stoves and cooking equipment should always be maintained and monitored throughout the day as a major safety precaution. All open flames should be supervised by a trained professional to ensure that they do not start fires while in use. Every employee in your workplace should also have a uniform designed specifically for use around open flames and heating elements. Additional safety precautions should also be considered such as tying hair back when working near a stove or tucking loose shirts in to eliminate a flammable hazard. While they may not sound like much, these small safety precautions prevent a fire from occurring in your restaurant.
Electrical Outlets
With so many people regularly charging their electronic devices throughout the day, many outlets are overloaded, posing another dangerous fire hazard in the workplace. Employees should avoid using inexpensive surge protectors to add more devices to each outlet space, in addition to reducing their use of power strips altogether. If you ever hear buzzing noises, you should turn off and unplug devices connected to that outlet and call an electrician right away.
Fire Prevention and Protection Services from Advanced Fire Protection Systems
Advanced Fire Protection Systems is committed to providing all of our commercial and residential customers with effective and appropriate fire protection systems. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to meet all of your fire protection needs and keep your business running. We provide full-service design, construction, testing, and maintenance for all water-based fire protection systems. Let us use our years of experience to protect your residential or commercial property from fires. To get started with Advanced Fire Protection Systems today, contact us online or give us a call at 443-557-0321.