Fire Risk Assessment - Identifying Fire Hazards

Fire Risk assessment:
Step One: Identify Fire Hazards

The first step in creating your Fire Risk Assessment is to identify the fire hazards. The best way to approach this is to understand the things needed to create a fire hazard.

For a fire to start, you need three things:

An ignition source
fuel
oxygen

Therefore the best way to look for a fire hazard is to consider your premises in terms of what materials you have that might fuel a fire, the possible sources of ignition and how oxygen might help it burn. Walk around ALL areas of your premises as you think about these things:

Identifying Ignition Sources:

This will vary enormously depending on your line of business, from the blindingly obvious if you carry out 'hot works' (eg welding, etc) to the more subtle in an office environment. What you are looking for is anything which has the potential to have a naked flame, spark, or which heats up (or could heat up if it develops a fault). Things to look out for in carrying out your Fire Risk Assessment might include the following:

Cigarettes and matches, etc from smokers (less of a problem for many premises now, following the smoking ban).
Anything involving a naked flame, such as gas cookers, candles or other open flame equipment.
Heaters of any type, but particularly hazardous are the portable gas-fired ones used for heating large spaces, which are a notorious fire hazard.
Any hot works, such as welding, heating bitumen, shrink wrapping, etc.
Ventilation and extraction systems - check they are not blocked by equipment or clogged with dust.
All lights and lighting equipment - ensure lights are not close to anything combustible. Fluorescent lighting works at very low temperatures, but halogen lights, for example, can get very hot.
Portable electrical equipment (see section on PAT Testing), and electrical installations (damaged cables, overloaded extensions on your extensions, etc).
Electrical switch rooms or intake rooms - check nothing else is stored in these areas.
Anything else which does or could get hot, including office equipment.

Fuel

Fuel is anything that will burn, but be practical in your approach and concentrate on finding things that are going to burn fairly readily, and which there is enough of to spread a fire. Some examples of fuels will include:

Stationary, letterheads, envelopes, other paper and archived paperwork.
Empty boxes, leaflets, posters, banners or other printed material.
Paint, varnish, white spirit, methylated spirit, thinners, glues, cooking oil and other potentially flammable liquids.
Curtains, drapes or other textile materials and soft furnishings.
Packaging materials, including plastic wrap, timber pallets, paper, etc.
Any flammable gases stored or used on the premises, including refrigerants and aerosols.
Any plastic materials, including foam filled furniture, polystyrene point of sale displays, etc.

Oxygen

As you might expect, the main source of oxygen is simply the air around us. Depending on the size and nature of your workplace, the air circulation through your premises may vary from a few doors and windows to several systems of ventilation, extraction, heating and air conditioning. Some buildings with large ventilation systems have devices which shut down the air flow through the ventilation ducts when the fire alarm is activated.

Fire doors are of crucial importance here. If you have a fire door designed to keep fire at bay for 30 minutes and someone has left it wedged open, it may as well not be there. Control of air flow (and therefore oxygen supply to a potential fire) around the building is a very important part of your Fire Risk Assessment.

Some industrial premises may have additional sources of oxygen, such as oxygen stored in cylinders or piped through fixed systems.

You should now have identified all possible fire hazards as the first part of your Fire Risk Assessment and made a record of your findings.

Go To Step 2 of your Fire Risk Assessment