What is fire protection?

Fire protection refers to the steps that a company takes to prevent fires from becoming destructive to the point of requiring costly repairs. Whether these costs are seen as human injury and death or large amounts of property loss from an uncontrollable fire, each company should strive to invest in some sort of fire protection initiative to prevent these damaging occurrences.

Fire protection isn’t just about smoke alarms and sprinklers. It encompasses training on what to do during a fire emergency as well as both active and passive fire protection strategies. The three major essentials when looking to implement a fire protection initiative go as follows

• The assessment of fire: This section includes all the different risks that may cause a fire. It also includes training on using fire extinguishers and other kinds of extinguishing equipment. This part of fire protection involves regulations and rules that are related to buildings and their construction.
• Passive fire protection: This includes the design of the facility, fire walls and doors, fireproof building material, firefighting training, effective visual markers, evacuation plans, and smoke doors.
• Active fire protection: This particular part of the three basics includes anything that requires a certain amount of initiating response from an outside source for it to work as intended. This is mostly found in manual and automatic fire detection (smoke alarms for example) but it also includes first aid and firefighting since those are technically an active response to an emergency.

Choosing the right kind of active and passive fire protection strategies highly depend on what kind of facility it is being applied to. Things to ask are:

• What types of materials are being stored?
• How large is the facility?
• What kind of layout does the facility possess?
• Is there more than one floor?

There are going to be maintenance requirements involved with the chosen fire protection plan and its specific equipment. Conducting required maintenance and check-ups on equipment is dependent on the specific local laws and NFPA regulations that govern a facility. These check-ups can be done by a trained professional who is a part of the company or it can be done by a fire protection agency.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when thinking about preventative measures involved in fire protection. Training is a part of each and every category. Without that training then there will be a higher risk of accidents due to lack of knowledge during these emergencies.