Fires prevention/protection

In addition, NFPA publishes many standards for a wide range of fire prevention, protection, engineering, and extinguishment matters. The name of this collection of standards is the National Fire Code. Each element of this collection has an identifying number. For example, NFPA 101 is the Life Safety Code, which addresses the safety of occupants and safe egress. There is a separate committee for each of the many codes and each committee continually reviews and updates a code s provisions. The National Fire Code is the primary source of standards in the United States for matters associated with fire. Other standards include model building codes and local codes. 

Describe the principles of fire prevention, protection, and control. 

Hot Work. The objective of a hot work standard is to prevent fires, explosions, and other causes of injury which might result from workplace ignition sources such as welding (qv), cutting, grinding, and use of electrically powered tools. The OSHA standards have specific requirements (36,94) for fire prevention and protection and a permit system. 

Hot Work Fire Prevention and Protection, 29 CFR 1910.252, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Apr. 11, 1990. 

NFPA 5 IB Standard for Fire Prevention During Welding, Cutting and Other Hotwork, 1999 edition. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA. 

The employer issues a hot work permit for hot work operations conducted on or near a covered process. The permit documents that the fire prevention and protection requirements in 29 CFR 1910.252(a) have been implemented prior to beginning the hot work operations it indicates the date(s) authorized for hot work and identifies the object on which hot work is performed. The permit is kept on file until completion of the hot work operations. 

Items requiring replacement because of changes in the law (for example, those relating to fire prevention, safety measures for the protection of employees and public). 

Damaging fires are uncontrolled chemical reactions, so fire hazards involving ordinary flammable and combustible materials could be included in the above definition of chemical reactivity hazards. However, this publication seeks to supplement basic fire prevention and protection measures by addressing how to successfully manage other chemical reactivity hazards in the work environment. Consequently, the use of the term "chemical reactivity hazards" in this publication will not include explosion, fire and dust explosibility hazards involving the burning of flammable and combustible materials in air. Storage and use of commercial explosives is also outside the scope of this publication. 

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) NFPA is non-profit organization that publishes the National Electrical Code , the Life Safety Code , the Fire Prevention Code , the National Fuel Gas Code , and the National Fire Alarm Code . The mission of NFPA is to reduce the worldwide burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating scientifically based consensus codes and standards, research, training, and education. NFPA is developing a fuel cell specific code, NFPA 853, which will cover the installation of stationary fuel cells of at least 50 kW output. Publication is expected to occur in 2000. 

Firefighters are often asked to speak to school and community groups about the importance of fire safety, particularly fire prevention and detection. Because smoke detectors reduce the risk of dying in a fire by half, firefighters often provide audiences with information on how to install these protective devices in their homes. 

This Guideline focuses on fire protection. For the purpose of this Guideline, fire protection and fire prevention are defined as ... 

Fire Protection—The science of reducing loss of life and property from fire by control and extinguishment. Fire protection includes fire prevention, detection of a fire, providing systems to control or mitigate the fire, and providing manual firefighting capabilities. 

Fire Prevention—Activities whose purpose is to prevent fires from starting. Fire protection and fire prevention go hand-in-hand. All fire protection programs include a fire prevention program. For example, control of ignition sources is very important in minimizing the risk of fire, but does not meet the definition of fire protection in this Guideline. 

The fire protection audit element can be conducted with the scope of the audit focused only on fire protection. However, many companies in the process industries audit fire prevention as an integral part of the overall loss prevention effort and combine it into audits with other programs. 

Toensure that necessary hot work for maintenance, construction, or modifications is done safely to prevent ignition of fires and protect life and property, the hot work control procedure should include the following as a minimum ... 

Training to provide knowledge of process operations and job execution skills is an important aspect of incident and fire prevention. In addition to job skills training, employees must be trained to properly execute fire protection tasks. A training requirements matrix for some of the elements of fire protection and the personnel that require training is illustrated in Table 4-1. 

Specific questions relating to fire prevention and protection and emergency response added to the Management of Change procedure s process for review of potential hazards. 

Approval by a designated person or function with fire prevention and protection responsibility. 

It is not the intent of this Guideline to deal in depth with facility security issues. However, effective fire prevention in a processing facility depends on people in addition to systems to detect developing fires and other incidents and to detect unauthorized intrusion into the facility. Intruder-caused vandalism, damage, spills, releases, or fires are not common, but are a credible threat. The potential fire prevention and protection requirements to manage the risk of security events from terrorism need to be considered in the overall fire protection system design. 

Within a process structure, the design of the individual levels and flooring can have a significant impact on fire prevention and protection. Table 8-1 provides a summary of process structure design impacts. 

Fire protection system impairment occurs when a fire alarm or supervisory system is shut-off, damaged, fails, or is otherwise taken out-of-service completely or in part. These out-of-service conditions are called impairments. While process monitoring, control, safety, and security-entry systems also provide protective functions, this element of the fire prevention program is only concerned with impairments to fire protection systems and equipment. An essential element of the fire prevention program is a procedure for fire protection impairment handling. 

Furthermore, although total removal of any one of the necessary conditions for a fire will absolutely prevent its occurrence, such stringent restrictions on industrial operations are seldom economically feasible. Industrial materials are, however, studied with a view to ascertaining just how much leeway there is, so that a compromise between absolute fire prevention and economy of operation may be reached. It is for this reason that, while we know how to prevent fires, they still do start, and why loss limitation is such an important part of industrial fire protection... 

Fites and Explosions in Industries (Prevention, Protection and Extinction). In order to have fire, there must be present a combustible material (such as wood, coal, fuel oil, etc), an oxidizing agent (such as oxygen, nitrates, chlorates, perchlorates, peroxides etc), and sufficient heat to start the fire. If buildings are constructed of wood or cardboard, they provide enough combustible material to start a fire... 

Fire Prevention Fire protection activities that deal with preventing fires starting by eliminating fire hazards through inspection and education programs. 

Texas, Disaster, Fire Prevention Engrg Bur of Texas, Dallas, Tex The Natl Board of Fire Underwriters, New York(l947) 55 G.Armistead,Jr, "The Ship Explosions at Texas City, Texas, on April 16 and 17, 1947 and their Results", Washington, DC 56)Anon, "The Texas City Disaster , Natl Fire Protection Assoc Quarterly, 41, No 1, July 1947, 25-57 57)Anon, US Coast Guard, "Rept of Interagency Comm on Hazards of Ammonium Nitrate Fertilizer in Transportation on Board Vessels", Part 1(1947)... 

Anatomy of a Disaster, Fire Prevention No. 110—The Journal ofithe Fire Protection Association, Aug. 1975, pp. 12-20. 

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