FIRE PREVENTION AT HOME
FIRE can be worse than robbers. When a robber attacks your house, he may just steal household goods. But when fire attacks your house, it may destroy both your household goods and the house itself. A robber chooses what to steal. Fire doesn’t choose what to burn. Practice fire prevention at home. As I began writing, a number fire incidences came to my mind. A certain bachelor returned home drunk at night. He decided to smoke. Because he was very drunk, he didn’t even realize how he fell asleep leaving the cigarette burning. The cigarette dropped from his hands onto the beddings making them start burning. Instantly he woke up and became sober. A second incidence involved a student who was studying for an exam using a candle. You see the disadvantage of last-minute studying is that even when you are tired, you refuse to sleep. This panicking student decided to doze off on the table leaving the candle burning. The candle continued burning until the entire candle stick melted away. The molten wax continued burning on top of the wooden table until the table caught fire. The fire resurrected the student from slumber. He learnt a lesson that never required any revision for the rest of his life. The last one involved a couple who were leaving in a house with no electricity. Their main source of lightning in the house was candle. One day, the house was very hot inside. So they decided to open the window to allow some fresh air. They ended up sleeping with the window open while the candle was burning. Unfortunately the wind blew the curtain towards the burning candle forcing it to catch fire. The sudden intense light in the room made the family wake up only to discover that the curtain was on fire. I am sure you also have your own stories of fire incidences. All these fire incidences were avoidable if the people involved practiced fire prevention. Over the last few years, fire incidences have been increasing in our country both in frequency and intensity. We have witnessed the burning of many buildings including markets, shopping malls, banks, office buildings, companies and homes. Even I write this article, I found Fire Brigade fighting fire at one of the shopping malls in Lusaka along Kafue Road this afternoon. These fires cause huge losses. If you were to quantify the losses, you would find that these fires burn property worth millions, in certain cases billions, of kwacha. Fire has left some people homeless who once owned homes. Some business people have been sent out of business permanently because of fire. There is nothing more painful than to see your investment which took you many years to acquire being reduced to ashes in seconds by fire. We need to reverse the trend. This will require the involvement of everyone. We need to be proactive, not reactive. We shouldn’t leave fire safety to Fire Brigade alone. Stoning the Fire Brigade for late arrival is not a solution. Fire Brigade simply come to help. It is your responsibility and mine to ensure that our homes are fire safe. Safety is a personal responsibility. We need to ask ourselves, ‘what have I done or what am I doing to protect my from fire accidents?’ In the end, painful though it may sound, it’s you and me who loses, not the Fire Brigade. I am not supporting the poor performance of the Fire Brigade. What I am trying to say is simply that when it comes to fire safety, we all have a role to play – individually and corporately. If you perform well on implementing fire prevention techniques, you will never need the services of Fire Brigade. Fire Brigade comes to control fire after it has occurred. Your goal should be to prevent fire from occurring in the first place. Fire safety must start from our homes. We need to practice fire safety at home. This will build a culture of safety in our nation. As a result, we will practice safety wherever we go whether at the market, shopping mall or workplace. Let’s begin by looking at what fire is. In simplest terms, fire is simply burning or combustion. From technical point of view, fire is a complex chemical reaction. To make it easier to understand, a Fire Triangle to explain the chemistry of fire. For fire to occur, it requires the combination of three elements just like the triangle requires three sides to be formed. So each side of the Fire Triangle represents one element. The first side represents fuel, second side heat and third side oxygen. In other words, fire occurs when, and only when, the three elements – fuel, heat and oxygen combine together. When you combine them, fire occurs. While the fire is burning, if you remove one of the elements, fire goes off. It’s that simple. Oxygen is a gas that supports combustion. Without it, combustion cannot take place. Firstly, oxygen is readily available in air. So as long as you have air, it means you have oxygen as well. Secondly, heat provides the ignition point for fire to take place. What this means is that for the fuel to burn it has to reach a certain ignition temperature for fire to occur. So anything that is hot like spark, hot stove plates and friction can provide heat to ignite the fire. Lastly, fuel is anything that can burn. This can be gas, liquid or solid. The type of fuel determines the type of fire. The burning fire goes off when one of the following occurs. If oxygen runs out, fire will go off. If you remove one of the elements from the burning fire, fire will go off. For instance when you pour water on fire, you lower the temperature which means that you have removed the heat element from the burning fire. So the fire will go off. Covering fire with a fire blanket prevents oxygen from coming in contact with fire which means that you remove the oxygen element of fire. Hence the fire will go off. Pouring sand on the burning fire works like a fire blanket. Fire extinguisher operate on the principle of removing one of the Fire Triangle elements usually oxygen or heat to extinguish fire. Now that you have understood how fire is formed, let’s look at how to prevent fire. The goal of fire prevention is to ensure that the three elements do not combine together. As stated, oxygen naturally exist in air. So there is very little, if any, that you can do from blowing wherever it wants. As a result, oxygen will usually be in contact with either fuel or heat separately and no fire will occur. In other words, oxygen is ever-present. So your focus should on the remaining two. This means that you must ensure that heat doesn’t come in contact with the fuel. The key principle of fire prevention is that keep the fuel away from any source of ignition. Once you do that, you have prevent any fire from occurring. The following are some the fire prevention strategies you practice. The first one is always remember that fire can attack you. Most people think that fire can’t happen in their house. They just have this inner feeling that their homes are safe from fires. You can’t claim to be safe when you haven’t put any safety measures in place. Never think that the people who lost property in a fire were just unfortunate or cursed. Probably some of them felt the way you are feeling or thought the way you are thinking. You must become safetyconscious. Lack of safetyconsciousness makes people behave careless. A safetyconscious person will have a positive attitude towards safety. He or she will remember to extinguish the candle before sleeping and he or she will smoke from outside the house instead of inside. These and many other simple safety practices can make a huge a preventing fire from attacking your house. Have a positive attitude and treat fire safety as a priority. The second one is that maintain good safety practices. Store all the flammable substances safely. Do not put flammable substances near the source of fire. Keeping a plastic cup next to the breezier is unsafe. Leaving pressing iron connected to power and switched on after power is ‘gone’ because when power returns, the pressing iron will ignite the fire. There are so many flammable substances at home. Some flammable materials such as perfume come labeled with the word ‘flammable’ or ‘highly flammable’. Such materials should be handled with care as they can easily catch fire. If you use a generator which requires petrol, ensure you store less quantity of petrol. The larger the amount of flammable material, the higher the risk of fire. Keep the container of flammable materials closed and there are no leaks. The empty container of flammable material must be treated as a full one. This is because the empty container may contain residual fuel inside. Ensure that sources of fire like matches or candles are kept away from children. Make sure that electrical equipment like TV are kept clean and well-ventilated. All the electric cables must be insulated. Do not overload the socket or adapter. The third one is install fire detection and control devices. Currently fire is detected in homes by people seeing fire or smoke. Most people rely on their eye to detect fire. Sometimes fire would have spread by the time fire is detected using this method. Using a fire detecting device like smoke detector is fast and reliable. I know some people will say, “smoke detectors are expensive!” Yes they are expensive. But the question is, “which one is more expensive between buying a smoke detector and reconstructing your entire house?” you need to possess a fire extinguisher at home. A fire extinguisher will help to control fire when it occurs. So a smoke detector will tell you once fire occurs and the fire extinguisher will help you to put it out immediately. You should the basic firefighting skills especially how to operate a fire extinguisher. You are the best safety manager in your house. Take time to survey your house. Firstly, identify all the things that can burn. Then, identify the possible sources of fire. Finally, find safe ways of keeping things that can burn away from the sources of fire. Sensitize the entire family to be safetyconscious and practice safety always. You don’t need to obtain a permit or license from government to own a fire extinguisher. So buy one. Until next week, stay safe. Zambia needs you. For your comments, contact the author on cell +260 975 255770 or email: marksucceed@gmail.com Mark Kunda—Safety Consultant
Fire safety must start from our homes. We need to practice fire safety at home. This will build a culture of safety in our nation. As a result, we will practice safety wherever we go whether at the market, shopping mall or workplace.