Fire safety measures are extremely important to protect your property and prevent loss of life. Since residents of apartment complex live closely, they affect each other’s risks associated with fire. Apartment fires have the potential to spread fire, heat and smoke throughout building affecting safety of all residents.
Be Prepared for a Fire Emergency
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Install and Maintain Proper Smoke Alarms.
Smoke alarms should be installed on every level of the house. Keep alarm clean of dust by regularly vacuuming over and around them. Replace batteries in smoke alarms at least once or twice a year and replace the entire unit after ten years of service, or as the manufacturer recommends.
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Awareness about the Building Evacuation Plan.
Directions to Safety Exit and Fire Escape should be properly marked on each floor. Ensure you have at least two primary routes and a route in case you cannot exit through primary route. Never block or lock the route which will trap you in case of emergency. Be sure your building manager posts evacuation plans in high traffic areas, such as lobbies.
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Compulsory Fire extinguisher in Every Apartments and in Lobbies.
Each flats or family in an apartment must have proper fire extinguisher and each adult member in family must know ho to use them. Use CommonFloor Asset Maintenance Tracker to setup reminders for refilling of these extinguishers.
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Have Regular Fire Drills.
Have regular fire drills (recommended One drill every six months) to train community members or handling fire emergencies and be become aware of the evacuation plans and sound of fire alarms.
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Get your belongings and Home Insured.
Insure your property and appliance against fire, theft and other accidents that can damage them. In case of fire or natural calamity which leads to loss of property and belonging, the same can be claimed from your insurance company. Know more about home insurance.
When Facing a Fire Emergency
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Call the Fire Rescue Department and Ambulance.
Do not assume anyone else has already called the fire department. Have Emergency Contacts posted next to the Phone and keep these contacts saved in your cell phone.
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Alert all family members.
Alert all members of your family and make your way out together. Never try to get things or belongings when fire break out. If your primary exit is blocked, use other way to leave your premises. Do not open a door if you feel it is hot. Stay calm and help other to control the situation. Once you are out safe, do not go back to house unless fire service tells you it is safe.
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Do not use lift.
During fire in your building or apartment, leave the premises by nearest available exit and close all doors and windows behind you. Never use lift for leaving the premises or apartment. Do not open any other doors other than the one you need to escape.
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If trapped in your room or building.
If you trapped in your room or building during fire try to stop smoke and fire getting into your room. Use towels, blankets or spare cloths to block the gaps in the door. Go to window, shout for help and once you heard by fire service and help is on the way, stay near to the floor by the window. Stay calm and co-operate with fire service, don’t try to jump or run.
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If fire on your clothes.
Stop, drop and roll if your cloth catches fire. Do not get panic or run, it will make fire burn faster and leads to more injuries or burn.
When NOT to use a Fire Extinguisher
If you cannot easily and quickly put out a fire then it’s too dangerous to try. You should not use your fire extinguisher if:
- You aren’t sure it’s the right extinguisher for the type of fire.
- You’re too nervous or forgot how to use it.
- The fire is bigger than a typical trash can.
- Flames are quickly spreading.
- The fire looks as though it could block your escape route.
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Tags: apartment fire safety, fire safety guidelines for apartments, fire safety tips
Most useful information for all residents in Apartments.
An important work, as our urban life is getting straight into apartments. A good and required article after the fire incident that took place on 23 feb 2010 in bangalore.
Fire safety measures are very important to protect oneself at the time of fire outbreak. This blog is pretty helpful in making one understand how to use fire safety devices and how to avoid fire.
This Article is very useful as many people are not aware of fire safty measures and what all steps to be taken in case of fire.
In most of the appartments the fire saftly measures are lacking. Now it’s time to rethink before something goes wrong.
We need to train people of our apartment with fire drill and appeal to all owners/residents to have home insurance cover. Keeping the fire staircase and the pathway down in ground floor clean are must.
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What are the obligations of the builder towards installing fire safety measures? After the builder has left, where can owners get details of fire safety equipment installed and their operations for 12 story building? What if the fire equipment is not working when builder leaves the maintenance operations, how can residents get them operational? What legal actions can owners take against builders not fullfilling their responsibility?
You can find information about legal powers Owners Association and legal actions possible against builder on this link:
http://www.commonfloor.com/articles/legal-powers-duties-of-apartment-owners-association-687.html
Thanks a ton for sharing this useful information.
Realy very useful information. Being an ERT member I sincierly request all the members to circulate to friends.
Thanks a lot for this timely aricle in the wake of the carlton towers fire mishap. We are discussing safety measure and this article has all the information
Good information of fire safety.How to get trained on fire-drill.Also it is good to volunteer one/two person/s as fire marshal
There is NO need for alarm. We can at the most have DCP Fire extinguishers placed at vantage points which we can identify. We need to be aware and thats it. No panic
I agree with Col B Ramani. Awareness and preparedness is required. We should make sure that we don’t panic.
I am glad to see this post and also all the active comments! Here are my two cents as I am a member of the community Emergency Response Team with the local fire department in California and I have been through training in search & rescue, earthquake preparedness, fire suppression and first aid.
Couple of assumptions – in the event of major earthquake/disasters you are on your own for a while – emergency services do not have the capacity to get to all affected for the first few days. Though Hyderabad is not in a major earthquake zone (Zone 2) but the masonry structures are death traps in the event of even a small earthquake (remember Lathur, Maharashtra).
India does not have any building codes that are actively implemented. Building permits are all about square footage and do not deal with structural issues or safety – even today. Ok, they will make a tamasha of arresting the building owner after a building collapse or major fire but it is too late for the families of the victims. If a building is over 19m tall then there are some fire dept. requirements (sprinklers, alarms. escapes) but I am not sure how actively even this is enforced. Even if you have sprinklers in the buildings there is not adequate water storage dedicated to these sprinklers!
Many building lifts have collapsible mesh doors which inherently are dangerous for its occupants in the event of smoke or fire! This is why collapsible lift doors are banned in most parts of the world and even in Bombay but still allowed in Hyderabad even today!
Fire services in India are really out of luck – in the event of a fire they do not have access to water at or near the site of the fire – no water hydrants around the street corners and if there are some they may not have any water! So what do they do when they arrive at a scene – they will use what little water they carry on their trucks and then wait for water trucks – too late for the building on fire!
Ok, what can we do in the meantime –
- Conduct an annual fire drill. Know your exits and makes sure they are clear of clutter. The recent fire in Bangalore was so tragic – fire escapes were all blocked/locked and a few people had to jump to their deaths!
- Invite the local fire department and request them to give the society members a seminar on fire safety – have them do an audit of the buildings and suggest changes as soon as possible.
Have enough residents trained on search and rescue, first aid and fire safety – Items to cover in any citizen training:
o Utility shutoff
o Basic fire suppression
o Earthquake preparedness
o Light search and rescue
o Building damage assessment
o Home disaster preparation
o First aid / triage
o Hazardous materials recognition
o Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) awareness
o How to assist family and neighbors
Remember – in the event of a major disaster – help will not reach you for the first few days and so we are on our own! Better be prepared and aware.
Also see some recent stories on related news:
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/hyderabad/poor-quality-mix-led-collapse-265
fire evacuation drills are not joke,carlton tower issue is a lessons to learn,Hope the fire at Carlton Towers (Airport Rd Bangalore) would be an eye opener and an opportunity to learn from the grave mistakes.
Dear mujeeb,
thanks for giving good information, i saw your website really it is good, please give me your contact details i should meet you once regarding that fire knock out.
I am a Fire Engineer.Working in SAIL. Very very useful informations are there in the article.People must know.Better to circulate in humanity angle.
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