The LWF Blog

Fire Safety for Facilities Management Personnel – Understanding Fire Development – Part 284

December 23, 2024 9:23 am

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 283, LWF discussed human behaviour in fire situations. In part 284, we continue looking at how people react to signs of fire when they are committed to an activity or have paid for food.

Fire disasters that have resulted in deaths or casualties are examined and the assessments learned from by fire safety specialists, behavioural psychologists and authorities. Unfortunately, adaptions in behaviour are not seen from the public.

After the fire at Hendersons (covered in part 283 of this series), a further department store fire was seen at Woolworths in Manchester in 1979. Ten people died and again, customers in the restaurant area wanted to finish their meals or pay for them prior to evacuating. The circumstances were discussed widely in the fire safety industry and were even subject to media attention over the next few years. The subject of human behaviour in fire was covered by some popular science-based television programmes at the time.

In 1993, a fire at Littlewoods department store in Chesterfield resulted in two deaths, 80 people injured and many customers needed to be rescued who were trapped on the first floor where the restaurant was located. It was reported that, again, customers in the restaurant did not evacuate when requested to do so, even when staff reported the smoke was close to head height. In fact, members of the public didn’t realise the seriousness of the situation until the ceiling above their heads began to collapse.

In recognition of these issues, Approved Document B (England and Wales) advocates that where a storey of a building contains an area for consumption of food or drink by customers, not less than two escape routes should be provided from the area, one of which should lead directly to a storey exit, without passing through any high hazard area such as a kitchen.

The next issue in human behaviour and fire safety is that when a fire is large enough to ensure attention is diverted from normal or planned activities, members of the public still fail to understand the urgency of the need to evacuate the building and instead, the fire itself becomes the focal point of interest.

In part 285 of this series, LWF will discuss what happens when the fire becomes the point of interest to the public. 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.