Project Background
Building fire remains one of the greatest threats to human life working in building. Fire threatens governments, weaken economies and effectively destabilize societies and kill people. Building fire thus has important ramifications for the nation-state as well as for the corporate world. Increasingly, arsons and other flammable goods have seriously affected economies by bring down business and destroying human life. Occupational safety of buildings is one of the most challenging phenomena in the modern world take for example the recent fire at twin world center caused by a terrorist act of hijacking airplanes and destroyed the building. That incident is will remain in the mind of people for many years to come. This project undertakes to study fire protection services that are available to those users.
Project Scope
The scope of study follows literature review of fire protection measures currently available and being utilized by companies and building owners to achieve protection of buildings and user. The building administrator manages the entire gamut of processes from training to installation of safety equipment for providing a pre-defined measure of fire protection. The capabilities required by the fire protection manager in managing the building are involving. What are the necessary attributes required by a fire protection department of a building to manage building based on end user requirements outlined by organizational objectives.
This study focuses only on developing fire protection procedures, equipments and training required necessary to assist and to improve the processes, which has been calibrated to deliver a specific fire protection measures meeting the required standards. However, this study assumes that other factors like reputation of the building, financial stability are of less consequence.
Options Available
There are many options available for fire protection for people in these incidents. To begin with there are many equipments that are installed in the building to protect fire fighters. Some of the apparatus available is sprinkler system which uses water or gas in mitigating the effect of fire breakout. The sprinkler should have a longer horse pipe for the water sprinkler or a lighter cylinder for those using the cylinder to put off the fire these systems should be strategically placed so that no corner or area of the building should be inaccessible. The pumps that will be used should have water throughout to ensure that when there fire breakout it shall not become destructive. each building should ensure that their staff members are trained of the following.
How to use the alarm system to alert about impeccable danger, the alarm system that used should be strategically placed so that it can be accessible to all users in the building especially those with knowledge about thee building
Causes of Fire
Although you cannot see it, the current running through your electric is a source of heat and if a fault develops in the wiring ,that heat can easily become excessive and start afire. In fact neglect and misuse of wiring and electrical appliances are the leading causes of fires in business premises. So have any faults in your wiring promptly repaired-and get an electrician to do the job. Do it yourself is a dangerous with something unseen like electricity. Most electrical fires start with appliances-heaters standing near combustible material, pressing soldering irons left on after job has been done. It really is worth taking trouble to see that everything is switched off after use.
Electrical lamps get very hot and fires start if lamp shades or if materials used in window displays come into contact with them.
Rubbish
FIRES love rubbish. Fire will be destructive if there will be hip of paper not well disposed. Get rubbish out of your premises and into metal bins as quickly as you can.
Another big danger with rubbish is when you burn it. These sorts of bonfires get out of control or too often-sparks fly through the windows and before you know it, you have got a really fire on your hands. If you must burn rubbish use proper incinerator, well away from the building and storage, and stand guard over it.
Smoking
The discarded cigarette- is still one of the most frequent fire starters. Getting rid off rubbish will help to reduce fires from this cause-but even so, wherever cigarettes and matches are used, there is the chance off fire starting. Do not smoke in rooms where goods are stored.check last thing in the evening that no cigarette-ends have been left burning. Have plenty of ashtrays around
Heaters
Portable-heaters-electric-,oil or gas-start fire if goods come into close contact with them ,or if they are accidentally knocked over. Make sure all heaters are well away from goods or combustible materials in walls or ceilings. Place or fix portable heaters so hat they cannot be knocked over, and keep oil heaters away from draughts. They should also be securely guarded. With convectors or thermal storage heaters, never stand books or papers on thermo drape cloths over them, or you may make them overheat and fire can result
Plan of Action for Prepared for Fire Protection
The following is a plan of action and events that needs to be considered in order to overcome help in fire evacuating
Training of the residents s – The supervisors should be thoroughly trained on how to handle these incidents. Some may be like them and some may not be like them, and this is a big challenge to the county. They should be trained on all safety measures in all departments depending on which floor works. They should also be psychologically be prepared to handle this challenged people as their understanding is not like theirs.. It is the responsibility of the management of the building of occupational safety and health to make sure that the all are prepared. These trainings should be regular, depending on the needs at work, and after training, whatever that has been learnt should be implemented and the supervisors should make sure that it works and it’s friendly to all, who will also need to be taught on some issues about their safety at work.
The supervisors must not blame the employees when an accident occurs, but take an immediate action which will prevent repeated accidents. They should also be taught of the legal implications if they are not responsible in handling their duties well as the employees may take them to court if their issues are not handled well. Their public relations with the employees should be of high standards They must treat them well to avoid unnecessary confrontations. During the training, posters, audio visuals, films and classroom presentations can be used to facilitate training and understanding. The director should set aside funds for trainings of the staff and the other employees who can be selected for the group.
Purchasing of modern and enough safety equipments – Sometimes, cheap safety equipment can be bought but can be dangerous to the users of the building. At times the safety wears may be bought but are not meant to be used when doing a specific job. This will result to accidents now and again. Enough safety wear should be bought to serve all the employees at all times without any shortage. There should be no sharing of this safety wears and the employees should be taught be the supervisors on how to use them. When these safety wears are worn out, there must be an immediate replacement of them so as to reduce cases of accidents. The county must make sure that it has machines which are friendly to the employees, which do not endanger their lives.
Introduction of the insurance cover and compensation scheme – This will protect the people while in the building.
Why solutions are necessary
Fire disasters have occurred in the world over many years. They have occurred both in highly and less developed countries. These fire disasters have either been caused by human forces or natural forces or interaction of both natural and human forces. When they occur they cause serious challenges and consequences to the economies of affected people or countries. In most cases, the phenomenon that triggers disasters is beyond human control. In general the losses that cause fire are largely a function of human factors which are human decisions, human actions and human choices or sometimes lack of these. Fire disaster means misfortunes or calamities. It can also be termed as an incident of great harm and distress. It causes the society to stop it normal functions and divert all resources to use in mitigating the effects of fire.
As I have mentioned before, fire is a result of human force, natural force or a combination of both; management for these fire have been put in place. The management of fire means setting policies that helps in fighting fire at levels of occupancy and the policies involves all stages of fire management from putting off, evacuation to post fire counseling. So fire management body has to come up with personnel and facilities dealing with fires. The personnel includes both the administrative, individuals and community actions who try to minimize loss of lives or/and damage of facilities. they do through fires preparedness includes efforts for effective rescue of people involved in the fires disaster, relief and also rehabilitation and reconstruction of destroyed materials like buildings.
The administration, individuals and community also engage in fire disaster mitigation which encompasses all measures to reduce the impact the fires disaster phenomenon by improving the community’s ability o withstand the impact of the fires. This they do through the prevention, preparedness and real response of fires disaster during or after which includes relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Fires disaster will definitely leave behind vulnerable people who are prone to it again incase it occurs again. To be vulnerable is to live with a likelihood that one will suffer from hazardous events. In the society, some people are more vulnerable than others. The nearness to hazardous places the more the consequence one will face. Earlier, fires disasters in building have established that natural hazards are a cause of vulnerability to disasters. People who live or work in certain environment are prone to disasters that may occur to such areas. This means that humans living or working in certain areas make themselves vulnerable to fire disaster. Vulnerability is simply reduced to zero by people not living in affected areas.
Scientists, technologists and engineers have attempted to predict hazardous events and development of technologies that can enable human structures to withstand fires. The assumption has been that events are acts of nature that cannot be prevented but rather there are possibilities of reducing their consequences. As a result of this, technologies and materials for building and construction for example have been developed so that they can withstand fires.
In spite of many games in the scientific and technological process to control vulnerability to fires disasters people continue to be injured, die and loss of property. One reason for this is because many fires disasters predictions and other mitigative technology are costly and individuals and communities are either unwilling or unable to afford them. The costs tend to set criteria for deciding on what mitigation methods to use under various circumstances. So according to this view, although vulnerability is a cost, vulnerability reduction is itself costly.
These consequences can be in view of the time period of a disaster that is either short term, mid term or long term. Effects of fire disasters are short term consequences of disaster that comprise of direct damage,, indirect damages and secondary effect. Impacts comprise of economic, social, psychological and environmental impacts. These are mainly long term consequences of fire. The worst case scenario that determines the degree of risk is whereby fires occurs because people who are vulnerable simply do not know when the disaster may occur, what protection measures to take and these coupled with negative attitudes towards use of certain measures. This increases human suffering from disastrous situation. A good example here is a case where by oil tankers exploit and kills thousands in Nigeria. This will definitely make everyone to take such scenarios for granted not knowing that oil tankers can cause devastating effects. The fact that disaster can happen anywhere and anytime, everyone should be prepared.
Fire protection of office documents
The information on a computer is on a hard drive. Hard drives have moving parts and can wear out. The computer could get damaged in disasters. Data could be lost with accidental deletions. Backups are used to recover data in case of system failure or disasters. Backups are taken on data storage devices. Backups can be either at a file level or of the complete system. Data should be archived offsite as well to guard against disasters like fire. The information is sent to the remote site across a network. Original software comes with CDs and does not need to be backed up. The data files however need to be backed up. Emails and personal settings on a computer need to be backed up as well. The frequency of the backup needs to be decided based on the volume and the importance of the information.
It is important to keep spare hardware and cartridges in case of failure during the backup. The backed up data must be checked regularly to ensure that the data is safe and the procedures are right. The back up hardware and software must be tested before use. The simplest backup system has one computer and user. Otherwise, a network computer can be used that hosts file sharing.
The backup procedures start with the selection of the device to record the backups. These include floppy disks, tapes, removable hard disks, cartridges and CD-ROMs. The devices should have more than enough space to backup all the data. A controller card can be used to interface with your backup drive. The backup drive is connected to the computer to backup the system state data. It is necessary to create a schedule for the backups. It is better to use separate disks each time a backup is done. This helps when an older copy of the file is required.
Given the time and effort that goes into creating work it is required that a high level back up plan is in place for your system. All the employees should be conversant with the backup procedures so that each person keeps all his work safe.
High level disaster recovery plan for a business
The computer system of any organization is sometimes subject to failure. The main reasons for failure are disk crash, power failure, software problems or disasters like fire. It is important that the work is not lost. Hence a recovery mechanism is required that restores the system to its state before failure. A transaction failure is because of a logical or system error. A logical error is due to internal conditions with data and resources. A system error is due to undesirable states of the system. A system crash occurs with hardware malfunction or a bug. This brings transaction processing to a halt. Disk failure implies that the disk loses its contents.
Recovery algorithms ensure that actions are taken to keep enough information to allow recovery from failures. Actions are also taken after failure to recover the contents of work. Information in volatile storage is usually lost in a systems crash. Non volatile storage retains the information.
Some systems have battery backups so that the information is not lost in a power failure.
Stable storage is used so that the information in the system is not lost. To enable this we use several nonvolatile storage media like disks that have a failure mode. The information is regularly updated. The simplest system uses a mirrored separate disk. For disasters like fire the information is stored on a remote site. A remote system may also be used. The information needs to be protected during data transfer. The transfer is considered complete only when the information is recorded on all the physical blocks. Logs are used to record database modifications. After system failure some transactions need to be redone. Shadow paging is used to maintain the current transaction page and a shadow page. Recovery techniques also include the use of logic and transaction rollback.
Disasters are possible and hence it is important to be prepared. In case a disaster does occur the consequences can be devastating. A disaster recovery plan will keep you safe.
References
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