Fire safety is essential, both in the home and at work. Making sure that you have the proper warning systems in place can, in fact, be what saves or cost lives in the event that tragedy should strike your home or your office. Installing the appropriate fire protection services, including fire alarm systems and fire sprinkler systems can help you protect your family, your workers, your property, and your belongings and inventory. Fortunately, government regulations are in place that increase the chances that buildings of all kinds are up to code and have the proper safety measures in place.
In addition to the initial installation, however, is the need for the proper fire sprinkler and fire alarm maintenance. Required at the time of the initial building before certificates of occupancy can ever be awarded, in fact, fire sprinklers and alarms are one of the final inspections that must be completed before any business can be opened or anyone can move into a house. Following the initial inspections, however, continued fire alarm maintenance is also required.
If you are in the business of property management, the need for careful attention to all fire codes and proper fire alarm maintenance is especially important. In fact, property managers are responsible for the safety of tens or hundreds of residents, depending on the size of the complex. Consider some of these statistics about the safe implementation and the proper maintenance of fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and other types of fire protection services:
- Four property classes account for 50% of high-rise fires: apartments, hotels, offices, and facilities that care for the sick.
- In the years between 2004 and 2006, electrical malfunctions accounted for 19% of non-confined fires in hospitals.
- Research indicates that hotel and motel fires cause an estimated 15 deaths and 150 injuries every single year.
- Estimates indicate that warehouse property fires have substantially decreased in the last 30 years. In fact, between the years 1980 and 2011 they dropped from 4,700 to 1,200.
- Small data centers in the U.S. are required to have Early Warning Fire Detection (EWFD) systems. This means that any data center that is less than 2,500 square feet must have an EWFD.
- Automatic sprinklers combined with early warning systems in all buildings could reduce overall injuries, loss of life, and property damage by as much as 50%.
- Fires in hotels and motels result in $76 million in property loss every year in America.
- Estimates are that 55% of medical facility fires are caused by confined cooking fires.
- The use of fire suppression systems can help protect persons and property and minimize loss and life.
- Yearly inspections help building owners know what changes or improvements need to be made to all kinds of fire protection systems.
