Nursing homes have a lot of flammable substances around. They have many oxygen tanks as well as cleaning chemicals and medications that are flammable. This can make it easy for something to spark and a fire to be started. It’s never a good idea to have a nursing home without a comprehensive fire safety plan as well as fire safety training for the staff. Without that training and planning, a fire can quickly claim victims. In nursing homes, the situation is especially dangerous because there will be people who aren’t easily able to evacuate the building on their own.
Your Fire Safety Program
Every nursing home needs to take a number of precautions to try to prevent fires from happening and to help everyone escape a fire. It’s essential and likely covered by law for your business, to have a sprinkler system. If there is a small fire, a sprinkler system can often put it out before it spreads. However, some fires don’t respond as well to sprinklers, and they may grow rapidly. Sprinklers often give patients and staff more time to evacuate, and time is in short supply when there is a fire.
Part of the fire safety program is to evaluate the building and see how well it is prepared for a fire. Are there fire detectors and fire extinguishers in enough places? If not, they need to be added to the building. With a commercial fire protection company in Berks County, nursing homes can learn the many ways that fire can be prevented from happening and mitigated if it does happen.
Evacuation Plans
There should be a clear plan in place for evacuation. The exact plan that you come up with should take into account the layout of the building, how many residents and staff there are, and how people can be taken out of the building even if they aren’t able to walk. The plan can be complicated with all of these factors, but a plan is essential for everyone’s safety. Safety training for all employees should include safety training so that they learn what to do if an evacuation is called. The plan should include a lot of safety placards that show the route to the nearest exits from various areas inside the building.
The plan should let the staff know what they need to do immediately upon seeing a fire. There also need to be guidelines for how the residents can be taken out of the danger area as quickly as possible. The staff also needs to know how to sound the fire alarm if they encounter smoke or fire. With the residents moved to a safer area, they will then have to be removed from the building. This will likely require every staff member to get involved in moving the residents out. Staff members also need to know what to do when the fire department gets there and where to lead the firefighters as people are being evacuated from the building.
Staff members will have to have training in how to remove things like feeding tubes, catheters, and IVs so that the residents can be led out of the building. They will also have to know how to put all of these accouterments back after the residents are in a safe area.
Prevent Disaster With A Comprehensive Fire Safety System
When you run a nursing home, fire safety is of the utmost importance. There have been tragic nursing home fires in the past, and it’s important to do everything possible to prevent that scenario. When looking for fire alarm systems in Lancaster County for your nursing home, choose Keystone Fire and Security.