WITH another firefighters鈥� strike still on the cards at the time of writing, matters of public safety are well to the fore in the media. Something that sparked my interest and set me asking questions of ministers was the safety of steel fire doors. These are supposed to give people at least an hour to escape a blazing building, but may fail far sooner (快猫短视频, 24 August, p 6).
In a mock hotel blaze, Daniel Joyeux, a fire researcher at the Industrial Technical Centre of Steel Construction near Paris, found that the outer steel sheeting of a safety door buckled and failed after 20 minutes. Using the method laid down by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva), the same door survived for 70 minutes. This throws into doubt the reliability of the international standards used in some countries to test fire doors. I asked Christopher Leslie, the junior minister in the Deputy Prime Minister鈥檚 Office who has much to do with fire matters.
Leslie said that England and Wales have long used a British Standard method of fire testing, which can be adjusted to test doors to specific performance levels. It involves using a furnace to heat one side of an installed door and its frame and comparing how its temperature changes in relation to a standard time-temperature curve. This effectively assesses the burning behaviour of the door under standardised and reproducible test conditions, approximating to one or more stages of a real fire.
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Unfortunately, said Leslie, it is not possible to simulate every type of fire that may be encountered by a typical safety door. But there is no reason to doubt the general robustness of this method, which has been proven over the past 40 years or more. However, as part of European harmonisation, Britain is soon to recognise a new EUmethod of fire testing for doors, which all member states have accepted, said the minister.
The ball is clearly in ISO鈥檚 court. It must surely consider changes in methods to make its tests more realistic.
A DEVICE called Warn-Tone was the focus of a recent news item in 快猫短视频 (3 August, p 8). Warn-Tone broadcasts a spoken message that can interrupt car radios and CDs, alerting a driver to an approaching emergency vehicle that needs leeway. James Hutchison, a firefighter from Buckinghamshire, developed Warn-Tone which would warn drivers of an approaching emergency vehicle before they even hear the vehicle鈥檚 siren. I asked Leslie if the government was assessing its potential.
Leslie said yes, it was discussed at a meeting of the Chief and Assistant Chief Fire Officers Association鈥檚 Appliances, Equipment and Uniform Committee earlier in the year. The committee agreed to support the development of the device. It wants further tests to see whether it is likely to get a licence from the government鈥檚 Radio Authority. Clearly, it may prove difficult to restrict the range of the device鈥檚 radio transmitter to a limited area. Further testing will also determine whether the system is practicable.
Leslie went on to say that it is vital that emergency vehicles arrive at an incident quickly. He hoped that the development of Warn-Tone would help to do this and it could even help avoid some of the accidents caused by emergency vehicles as they rush to the rescue.
