10 Fire Safety Equipment for Hospitals in 2024
Fire safety equipment means devices that are designed to protect and ensure safety during fire emergencies used by trained firefighters and the general public. Some common Fire equipment has fire-resistant gloves, sprinklers, protective gear, smoke alarms, fire blankets, communication tools, and respirators that help to extinguish fires, control their spread, and aid in safe evacuation. These equipment are used in homes, factories, commercial buildings, hospitals, and educational institutions.
Why Fire Safety Equipment is Essential in Hospitals?
Fire safety is important because when you consider what could happen should a fire occur in a healthcare building or hospital, which has many patients, employees, and visitors in the building, you’ll embrace the true need for the best fire safety products and procedures to be in the establishment within these facilities.
How to control fire incidents in hospitals?
When regarding how to control fire incidents in a healthcare facility should they arise, you want to explore these four principles of fire safety. These principles are:
Life Safety: To ensure the safety of anyone within the building, the first step is to install life safety measures. In a hospital condition, where patients may not be able to get themselves to safety, this is essential. Hospital employees have to safeguard either their own or others’ lives.
Notification: Appropriate notification must be provided to each resident of the building after measures have been made to guarantee their urgent life safety. This may refer to ringing off the fire alarm or stating anything over the hospital’s intercom system. Also, an essential stage in the notification step is making fast contact with the fire department.
Extinguish: Putting out the fire, if likely, is an additional step on the fire safety principles list. Not all circumstances allow for this, so it’s essential to stay away from trying to put out the fire if doing so would put you at risk.
Relocation and evacuation: These two concepts are also essential to fire safety. Employees at the hospital should leave the building and move away from the fire. The medical staff should also have a strategy in place for shifting and removing patients inside the building.
These four fire safety rules can be applied at different points all through the fire emergency and modified according to the intensity of the fire, the risks concerned, and other factors.
10 Fire Safety Equipment for Hospitals in 2024
1. Sprinklers
The most common active fire safety technology found in hospitals is the sprinkler system. Heat triggers sprinklers to turn on, spraying water on a fire to put it out and minimize flames and smoke until help comes. When a fire starts, advanced quick-response sprinklers may turn on in a matter of seconds. Building codes mandate sprinkler cover in all patient care facilities, public areas, storage rooms, and dangerous places.
2. Fire Extinguishers
A hospital’s portable fire extinguishers make it easy to put out fire fast. Common types are CO2 extinguishers for electrical fires, chemical extinguishers for flammable liquids or metals, and water extinguishers for common combustibles. While they are a first line of defense, extinguishers are unable to put out a large fire.
Some different types of fire extinguishers are:
CO2 fire extinguisher.
- Foam-type fire extinguisher.
- Halotron fire extinguisher.
- Dry powder fire extinguisher.
- Water-type fire extinguisher, which are divided into the following classes:
- Water mist.
- Water spray.
- Water jet.
3. Electrical and Power Safety
Because challenging life-saving technology in hospitals is operated by a huge electrical infrastructure, electrical fires pose a serious risk. Proper electrical safeguards are essential.
4. Fire Pumps
Strong water pressure is maintained in sprinkler systems and standpipes during fighting due to fire pumps. When pressure reduces pumps switch on automatically to raise water flow. Hospitals have alternative pumps in case their main pumps fail, making fire pumps redundant essential components. Pumps must have continuous repair, testing, and control.
5. Fire alarms
When smoke, fire, carbon monoxide, or other fire-related challenges are detected, a fire alarm system warns people in the area. Speaker strobes are another choice that may trigger an alarm and then play an audio emergency message alerting people not to use the building’s elevators. You might also explore the latest fire alarm systems.
6. Fire suppression system
A fire suppression system is very important to keep at home, offices, schools, hospitals, industries, and other areas for safety. There are a lot of valuable documents and equipment in the buildings and the most valuable thing is human life. If the fire outbreaks, it can lead to extreme damage and losses.
Fire suppression systems help control the fire and stop damage. Therefore, fire suppression systems installation is mandatory, because if losses once occur they cannot be recovered.
7. Fire doors
A fire door is a door with a fire-resistance evaluation, which is also referred to as a fire protection evaluation for closures, which is used as an element of a system that provides passive fire protection that provides for secured exit from a building, structure, or ship and to reduce the spread of smoke and fire between different areas.
8. Emergency and Safety Sign
If you want to warn people of potential risks, give directions, stop them from doing something, or guide them on how to do something effectively, safety signs are essential in the hospitals and another establishments.
9. Fire safety first aid kit
Fite safety first aid kit: A safety first aid kit has to contain everything required to care for someone who has burns on it. It has to come with a pain killer, scissors, non-adhesive gauze bandage, and antibacterial ointment.
Fire Blankets: A blanket is also the most effective firefighting equipment. When we put a fire blanket on a fire, the oxygen in the surroundings becomes cut off, putting out the fire. As a safety measure, always have a fire blanket at hospitals, homes, and other places. Note that once a fire blanket has been utilized, it cannot be reused; thus, after using it, have a new one.
10. Fire hydrants and Hoses
Fire department hoses are provided with high-volume water flow through fire hydrants situated all over the hospital’s facade. On every floor, interior pipelines also supply water. Professional firefighters or firemen use fire hoses to spray water directly onto fires. Hose systems provide an extra water supply if sprinklers fail or aren’t present in an area.
Conclusion
Firefighting equipment has an important role in every firefighting in hospitals or other buildings because when you consider what could happen should a fire occur in a healthcare building or hospital, which has many patients, employees, and visitors in the building, you’ll embrace the true need for the best fire safety products and procedures to be in the establishment within these facilities.