Looks like the yanks take of self closers as well then....I remember seeing a picture of a refurbished Grenfell flat with the private entrance hall removed as well....And bet every punter in every three storey house in the UK has disabled all their self closers to every room....what do you expect...there is no accounting for stupidity
I've seen buildings where some self closing fire doors can be held open on magnetic latches which get disabled if the power goes off or the fire alarm is triggered.
I will confess to finding myself more aware of safety matters than most, mainly because of various work-related stuff over the years.
I remember being at a social event which happened to be attended by the guy I knew as our company safety officer. Guess who dragged his chair right in front of the fire exit ;-)
At an event, I usually at least make sure that I know where the exits are, and the routes to them. Carrying out such a visual check, over the last 30 years I have found (and taken action on):
Emergency exit chained and padlocked: Bury Met Marquee with no fire exits, no exit signs, no emergency lighting: Lincoln Castle grounds. Previously failed electrical circuit leading to flat batteries in emergency lights and exit signs: London Inadequate exit signs and locked door on exit route: Whitby.
Even when the organisers have done their best, I have lost count of the chairs, piles of bags, push chairs and so forth which have been placed across the exits. Self-preservation doesn't seem to be a strong instinct.
I was at an event some years ago in a marquee, where the generator shut down and the emergency lights automatically came on. The generator was restarted, so the emergency lights went out. However, all the other lights were controlled by the lighting desk, which took several minutes to boot and get the lights back on.
I don't think anyone had actually thought through that very likely sequence of events.
The only extra bit of kit required was a switch in the mains feed to the emergency lights, or a few working lights not fed through the "clever" desk.
Our safety officer once flymowed his toes while wearing sandals. To be fair that was a *long* time ago, before HSWA.
The vast majority of interventions or changes *within my work experience* have been very sensible, and met with few objections. It's not often publicised, but the reduction in workplace injuries since HSWA (and then ISO 9001) has been very impressive.
Modern fire alarm systems are very clever and programmable. They don't just react to call points and detectors, they can trigger what ever sceanario you need.
Halma make Apollo detctors and have a whole range of interface devices that can be strung along the 24V 2-wire loop of detectors, call points or whatever. Every device on a loop is addressed individually by the fire panel so it can send a command to the I/O module which can release magnetic fire door closures, turn off lift motors, anything.
I'm not sure they even see that there's a problem. They simply don't think. And they/we don't think it will happen to them/us.
Until I volunteered to be a fire warden at work and underwent some (very basic) training I'm not sure I'd ever really thought about H & S at all.
The one area I did take notice of (still do) was aircraft safety briefings after reading an article by someone who escaped a crash because he had taken notice of the briefing, looked for his nearest exits (yes, plural) and understood how to work them.
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