ng with the senior fire officers earlier today, but you’re all here because you’ve volunteered to act as fire wardens for your own particular department, and for some of you this will be your first time in the role, although you’ll probably have taken part in several fire drills since you’ve been here, but now the construction work is finished and we have a couple of new corridors and stairways, we need the meeting to update everyone.

And before I forget, you might have noticed a bit of upgrading last week.
The handheld fire extinguishers, the standard ones on the wall, the report says they’re all working well, as is the overhead sprinkler system, but the old alarm system has been replaced and should be a lot more reliable.

Anyway, as fire wardens, you have a number of responsibilities.
Okay, those wardens responsible for the factory buildings, you’ll remember we had a minor fire back in January.
Luckily, the fire doors around the room stopped most of the smoke from getting out, but the alarm should have been pressed a lot earlier.
From what I understand, staff felt somewhat reluctant to activate it themselves and were looking for someone senior, so please ensure that everyone knows it’s their responsibility to take action immediately.
Can you also make sure that if anyone new has been hired since then that they have read the fire notices?

And wardens for office departments, you’ll also have to have a word with your staff.
When the fire alarm went off in January in that minor fire, people got out of the office building pretty quickly, that was fine, but once they were out they stood right in front of the doors, so if the fire crews had needed to access the offices they would have been prevented.
Good to see that everyone had left their bags and stuff behind though.

OK, next on the agenda, there’s a few aspects of fire safety that we need to go through with all you wardens.
Firstly, we want to make sure that when we have the next fire drill there’s nothing blocking the way in the escape routes, no obstacles I mean, so please have a look at that as soon as possible.
We want to be able to get outside very quickly.
One thing that should definitely be on your to-do list is making sure no one’s locked the fire doors and that it’s easy enough to get through them.

Now you might remember that last year we had a fire officer come and visit and show us what to do if we see a colleague starting to suffer from the effects of smoke inhalation.
Well, the same officer’s coming back to lead another session.
Another issue is how to handle the fire extinguishers.
Someone from the local fire department has booked in to teach people how to do that.
I think it would be a good idea if fire wardens and department staff attended those sessions.

Let’s see, what else is on the list?
Oh yes, the evacuation points, the green area behind the main car park, the pavement on Hunter Street and the unused area behind the factory car park.
Fire wardens need to make sure all staff are familiar with these locations for evacuation, so please send out emails directly after the meeting.

And the last point is to do with flammable liquids.
I believe there have been a few concerns about where they were being stored in the warehouse, but that’s been resolved now.
However, if anyone has anything else to report, do let me know.