Do you know that fire outbreak has cost Nigeria about 6 Trillion Naira in the last five years?

In case you don’t understand what this figure means. It can pay 500,000 Nigerian Graduates a gross annual salary of 1.2 Million Naira for 10 years or engage over 8.3 Million Nigerians for 2 years under the N-Power Program. If we use the 2018 Abia State budget as a benchmark, it can finance the Abia State budget for about 42 years or that of Zamfara State for about 45 years.

So you have seen how lack of fire safety measures is costing us as a National. These facts are scary. The bad news is there is no way we can tackle this at the national level if we fail to implement fire safety measures in our respective homes. For this reason, it is important to educate everyone.

So here are the top 6 fire safety measures you should consider for your home.

Fire risk assessment

Carry out a holistic assessment of your home to identify the fire risk level.

The purpose of this assessment is to identify all the likely things that might cause a fire in your home, the likely people at risk and what you need to do prevent that from happening. It assesses the building to develop the best fire escape plan. This is a critical fire safety measure. Getting this wrong can be so catastrophic, so it is important you appoint a good fire safety Professional to carry out this assessment.

Install smoke alarm

Mount Smoke detection devices. This will help you to contain the fire at its early stage.

“There is no smoke without a fire”. This is a popular cliché in Nigeria. Installing smoke detectors at strategic places, especially the areas with greater fire risk will alert you immediately of possible fire outbreak when smoke starts building up in your home. This will enable you to take immediate actions to contain the fire, especially if you are using a good smoke detector in Nigeria.

Acquire fire extinguisher

Acquire and place fire extinguishers at locations where they can easily be accessed.

A good fire extinguisher will help you fight the fire heads on immediately the detection system alerts you to a possible fire occurrence. This is necessary because the first minute of any fire outbreak is the most crucial.

Protect inflammable materials

Since it is not possible to eliminate all inflammable materials in a home, try at least to protect them from direct exposure to fire.

Fire will not burn without fuel. It is inflammable materials that provide fuel for a fire to thrive. Try to avoid this by protecting these materials from direct exposure to fire or anything that might ignite a fire. Try to follow all the OSHA guidelines when dealing with inflammable materials.

Develop a fire escape plan

Don’t forget to have a contingency plan in case something happens.

Even the best safety measures can fail. So it is always important to have a plan to fall back on when things go “south”. A good escape plan will create a rallying point and an escape route during a fire outbreak. It will organise the home such that the exit pathways will always be free for immediate evacuation. It is not possible to design a good escape plan without professional inputs. This is because it will take into account the architectural layout of the building and also the size of people living in the house. So it is important you consult a professional. He will help you develop a plan that will suit all possible scenarios.

Regular fire drills         

Practice regularly to master the escape plan.

An escape plan is useless if the people it is meant for cannot activate it. The truth is a sudden blast of the smoke alarm can send people to panic attacks. So regular fire drills will familiarize the people on what to do in events of such outbreak. Don’t forget it is the duty of a Fire Safety Officer to conduct the drills. It is important you understand this very well.

Many lives have been lost to fire outbreak in Nigeria. Implementing fire safety measures might not just save your properties but also your life.

https://www.mosaicmanagementltd.com/insidemosaic/top-6-fire-safety-measures-consider-home/

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