In recent years there have been many horrifying incidents that have rocked our society and world abroad prompting investigation by way of coronial inquests which have delivered subsequent recommendations for improvement.
Some of those that come to mind are the Quakers Hill Nursing Home Fire, the Lindt Café Terrorist incident and internationally the horrific Grenfell Tower Fire which claimed over 70 lives in June 2017.
Each incident shared a common problem, that being the lack of current building floor plans and emergency plans. In each event, First Responders were without critical information required to run a rescue operation effectively.
Quakers Hill Coronial Inquest - Recommendations 1 and 2
- “That the NSW Government provide funding for the instalment of mobile data terminals in Fire and Rescue NSW vehicles;
- That Fire and Rescue NSW develop a digital data base of pre-incident plans for use in major structural fires;”
Lindt Café Recommendation - Item 10 (of 45) Develop Integrated intelligence platform
From the Coroner: “I recommend that the NSWPF investigate the development of an integrated intelligence system that allows selected officers secure access to all information platforms and to record and share operational decisions”
From the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 1 Report dated October 2019
Chapter 33 Recommendations Item 6 Plans 33 .12
“No plans of the internal layout of the building were available to the LFB until the later stages of the fire. However, because each floor of the building above floor 3 was laid out in the same way, the LFB was not unduly hampered in its attempt to fight the fire and rescue occupants by the absence of those plans. In another case, however, the lack of floor plans might easily have far more serious consequences. It should be a simple matter for the owners or managers of high-rise buildings to provide their local fire and rescue services with current versions of such plans. I therefore recommend that the owner and manager of every high-rise residential building be required by law: a. to provide their local fire and rescue services with up-to-date plans in both paper and electronic form of every floor of the building identifying the location of key fire safety systems; b. to ensure that the building contains a premises information box, the contents of which must include a copy of the up-to-date floor plans and information about the nature of any lift intended for use by the fire and rescue services. I also recommend, insofar as it is not already the case, that all fire and rescue services be equipped to receive and store electronic plans and to make them available to incident commanders and control room managers”.
At Australia Fire Protection we are always looking for the best way to support and serve our clients. In our search to align our business with innovative leaders, we partnered with indoor mapping specialist Locatrix, utilising their software PlanStudio to draft and create your high quality, spatially accurate and digital floor plans.
The state-of-the-art mapping features of PlanStudio is what drew us to partnering with Locatrix as it allowed our Fire Safety Advisors to quickly map and draw up a facility with high accuracy. All data stored is also then available to emergency services for access when they need to, in the case of an emergency.
In addition to floor plans, Locatrix’s PlanSafe product delivers site specific building emergency procedures as a learning outcome, providing another level of safety and compliance. PlanSafe enables the collection and delivery of data such as the Warden Structure of a facility, the contact names of the Emergency Control Organisation, the Emergency Evacuation Plan that shows the site-specific instructions as to how occupants are to escape a building and also any alternative solutions that building engineers have specified in the structure. All critical information for Emergency Services to be aware of – and have the confidence in the information currency, which both PlanSafe and PlanStudio ensure.
As Australia Fire Protection regularly visits your site for, we also review to ensure that these details are kept current. Why? Because we believe in ensuring A Safer workplace through Emergency Preparedness and Compliance as we Prepare People For Emergencies. We see the clear alignment with Locatrix because they believe in keeping people safe in buildings by enabling easy capture and sharing of critical building information for public safety professionals including Australian Fire Protection, via their software applications.
Learn more about our fire training and Fire safety courses. Contact us today for fire evacuation plan QLD.
