Introduction to Fire Safety Management

10 Safety
The safety of people in the event of a fi re in buildings is
dependent on having emergency procedures that make
full use of the fi re safety design features of the building
and take account of the behaviour of the occupants
when faced with an emergency situation.
Earlier chapters have covered the design of buildings
and this chapter examines how people perceive and react
to the danger of fi re. Only by understanding how people
may respond to a fi re can effective emergency procedures
be developed and implemented that overcome human
behavioural problems.
The aim of devising effective emergency procedures
is to ensure that the occupants of a building are never
exposed to fi re effl uent or heat or that, if they are, any
such exposure does not signifi cantly impede or prevent
their escape and does not result in people experiencing
or developing serious ill-health effects.
This chapter discusses the following key
elements:
➤ Perception and behaviour of people in the
event of a fi re
➤ The measures needed to overcome behavioural
problems and ensure safe evacuation
of people in the event of a fi re
➤ Emergency evacuation procedures
➤ Assisting disabled people to escape.
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of people in
the event of a fi re
10.1 Perception and behaviour of people
in the event of a fi re
Fire safety in building design is aimed at providing a
safe environment for occupants while inside the
building. Provision is also made for a safe means of
escape for all occupants since a fi re emergency usually
involves evacuation to a place of safety. Obviously
the effectiveness of the means of escape that is
provided in any building is reliant upon how they
are used at the time of an emergency by individual
occupants.
The way an individual occupant of a building will
behave to a fi re danger is complex. The psychological
response of each person is based on their perception
of the situation they fi nd themselves in. In order
to understand how people perceive the danger of fi re
it is necessary to consider the principles of sensory
perception.
When a person has become aware of an emergency
they may react, for example, by spending time thinking
about what they should do or by starting to move. This
decision will be based upon how seriously they see
the risk and how much time they think they may have
to evacuate. It can be seen that individual perception is
therefore critical to overall escape time.
10.1.1 Principles of sensory perception
The way in which people perceive risk is dictated by individual
attitudes, skills, training, experience, personality,
memory and their ability to process sensory information;
it is the process by which we detect and interpret, i.e.
recognise information from our environment.