The LWF Blog

Fire Safety for Facilities Management Personnel – Fire Safety Management – Part 291

February 17, 2025 12:00 pm

Lawrence Webster Forrest (LWF) is a specialist fire engineering and fire risk management consultancy whose aim is to give information on best practice in fire safety for facilities management personnel through this blog series. In part 290, LWF began to discuss the effective management of fire safety. In part 291, we consider specific examples of real life fire situations where management deficiencies were determined to have been significant in the outcome of the fire.

1973 – Summerland Leisure Complex, Isle of Man
50 people died in a fire, the investigation following concluded:

• There was no overall duty in respect of fire safety
• Staff had received no training in fire safety
• Staff had delayed in summoning the fire service
• There was no organised methodical evacuation
• Fire exits were locked
• Staff actions were misguided
• The fire alarm system had not been operated in a timely fashion.

1981 – Stardust Discotheque, Dublin
48 people died, the investigation concluded:

• There was no emergency evacuation plan
• Employees had not been allocated specific duties to undertake in the event of a fire
• Staff were as confused as the patrons during the fire
• Exits from the building were locked, or appeared to be locked
• There was a delay in summoning the Fire Service
• The fire alarm system was not operated.

Although significant time has passed since these two disasters, it remains the case that many organisations have not clearly defined responsibility for fire safety and there is a lack of co-ordination in fire safety matters.

Some aspects of fire safety may be appropriately dealt with, but others may fall between two or more categories – building management, operations management, building maintenance, etc.

It should be noted that the courts and inquiries do not find it difficult to determine responsibility in such cases, and the responsibility is likely to rest on the shoulders of the most senior executives of an organisation.

In 1987, following the King’s Cross Fire, Mr Desmond Fennel QC stated ‘London Transport at its highest level may not have given as high a priority to passenger safety in stations as it should have done’.

The Fennel report also found that no one person was charged with overall responsibility for fire safety.

In part 292 of this series, LWF will continue to discuss the impact of bad management on fire safety and the potential outcomes. In the meantime, if you have any queries about your own facilities or wish to discuss this blog series, please contact LWF on freephone 0800 410 1130.

Lawrence Webster Forrest is a fire engineering consultancy based in Surrey with over 35 years’ experience, which provides a wide range of consultancy services to professionals involved in the design, development and construction and operation of buildings.

 

While care has been taken to ensure that information contained in LWF’s publications is true and correct at the time of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of this information.