Fire doors are an integral part of a building’s fire strategy. Having Fire doors helps limit the spread of fire and keeps you safe to enables you enough time to evacuate the building and keeps the building safe. They are only effective if they remain closed.
Why is it that important?
Each Fire door works with the Fire Alarm system and when the alarm is activated it close the doors automatically, this slows down any fire spreading into other areas. If you have an item that is in the way, such as a door stopper to prevent the door from closing, you have allowed the fire access to your areas. This would give you less time to evacuate your area before smoke and fire enters your area.
Each Fire door has between 30 minutes and up to 120 minutes before the fire breaches the door – wedging the fire door open gives you may be from 1 minute to 3 minutes to escape if the fire is in your area. Now can you see why when completing a fire evacuation, it needs to be done within 3 minutes. Wedging a fire door open stops it from automatically closing, therefore it can do its job to protect you and the spread of fire and smoke will spread quicker.
Did you know? If you wedge open a fire door and it is judged that this has put someone’s life at risk, you could suffer penalties, including a fine or even a prison sentence.
It is likely your building and contents insurance could be affected by a fire door being held open. If proven that a fire has spread due to a wedged open fire door, and other tenants areas are damaged, you could be liable for their damaged equipment/area and loss of income.
Did you know?
- it is actually illegal to prop a fire door open.
- All Fire doors must be fitted with automatic closing system.
- All fire doors must be free from posters with no hooks on the doors to store coats and bags
- The Fire door is part of the passive fire protection system for the building.
- They are there to ensure Fire and smoke do not spread and allow you time to leave the building to safety.
- Some fire doors have glass panels, it is important that if you need to cover it for privacy to leave a gap at the top and bottom of the glass panel. This allows the fire warden checking their area to see if there is a fire in the room or just as important the person in the room to see if there is a fire in the corridor with out putting themselves in danger.
- Fire doors must not have locks on them and should have a green break point if there is a fob system in place.
It is important to remember what you do will affect everyone in the building if it goes wrong. Should you have any issues, please raise them in BUG meetings.
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