# Fire safety in care settings

*Why a care home does not evacuate the way an office does, and what you actually do at three in the morning.*

## Production summary

- Modules to record: 2
- Total script: 1112 words, about 7 minutes of finished audio
- Voices: Amara (host) and Nadia (practice educator)
- Level: All health and social care staff

## Accreditation wording that must appear in the description

- **Skills for Health Core Skills Training Framework** (aligned): Mapped by us to the CSTF fire safety outcomes. Our own mapping, with no assurance, verification or endorsement by Skills for Health implied.
- **The CPD Certification Service** (planned): Application scheduled.

> Do not upgrade any of these words in a description or a thumbnail. Aligned is not accredited, and planned is not approved.


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## Fire strategy, evacuation and the risks unique to care

**Runtime** about 4 minutes. **Words** 608. **Starts at** 00:00 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- State the duties of the responsible person under the Fire Safety Order 2005
- Explain the fire triangle and the three ways to break it
- Describe progressive horizontal evacuation and stay put strategies
- Identify care specific fire risks and the controls for each

### Script


`[CUE 1]` *Care home floor plan with fire compartments shaded and residents moving sideways, not down.*

**AMARA**  [00:00]
Fire training in every job I have had said the same thing. Get out, stay out, meet at the assembly point.

**NADIA**  [00:08]
And in a care home that advice will kill people. Which is why this module exists as its own thing rather than as a paragraph in health and safety.

**AMARA**  [00:20]
Explain that.

**NADIA**  [00:20]
Picture the building. Forty residents. Most cannot walk unaided. Several are hoisted. It is three in the morning and there are four staff on. Now walk them all down a staircase in four minutes.


`[CUE 2]` *Fire triangle with a door closing to remove oxygen.*

**AMARA**  [00:34]
You cannot.

**NADIA**  [00:35]
You cannot. So care settings use a different strategy. It is called progressive horizontal evacuation. You move people through fire doors into the next fire compartment on the same floor, away from the fire. Not out of the building.

**AMARA**  [00:50]
And that compartment is safe?

**NADIA**  [00:52]
It is built to hold fire and smoke back long enough for the fire service to arrive. Which brings me to the thing I most want people to take from this module. The wedged fire door.


`[CUE 3]` *Wedged fire door with the evacuation plan disappearing as it opens.*

**AMARA**  [01:07]
Everybody wedges fire doors. It is the most ignored rule in every building I have worked in.

**NADIA**  [01:13]
Because people think of it as a housekeeping rule. It is not. In a care setting, the compartments are the evacuation plan. When you wedge that door open, you have not broken a rule about doors. You have deleted the plan.

**AMARA**  [01:30]
That reframes it completely.

**NADIA**  [01:31]
It is the same physics as the fire triangle. Heat, fuel, oxygen. Remove any one and the fire stops. A closed fire door removes oxygen and buys you thirty or sixty minutes depending on its rating.


`[CUE 4]` *PEEP card showing staff numbers, equipment and communication needs.*

**AMARA**  [01:46]
What actually kills people in fires?

**NADIA**  [01:48]
Smoke, far more than flame. It moves faster than fire, it disorients people, and it is toxic. In a building where residents cannot move themselves, containment is everything.

**AMARA**  [01:59]
Tell me about PEEPs.

**NADIA**  [02:01]
A personal emergency evacuation plan. For each person who cannot evacuate unaided, it says how they will be moved, by how many staff, with what equipment, and any communication or behavioural needs.


`[CUE 5]` *Emollient warning: cream, fabric, flame, with the MHRA alert cited.*

**AMARA**  [02:14]
Where should it live?

**NADIA**  [02:15]
Somewhere you can reach it in an emergency. Not in a locked office, not in a folder in the manager's drawer. I have seen PEEPs that nobody on the night shift had ever seen, which makes them a document rather than a plan.

**AMARA**  [02:33]
You said care has fire risks that general training misses. What are they?

**NADIA**  [02:38]
The one people do not know about is emollient creams.


`[CUE 6]` *Oxygen safety zone diagram with no flame, no oil, no grease markers.*

**AMARA**  [02:42]
Moisturiser?

**NADIA**  [02:42]
Moisturiser. It soaks into clothing and bedding, and it makes those fabrics burn far more readily. There have been deaths. The MHRA has issued repeated warnings about it.

**AMARA**  [02:53]
I assumed the paraffin free ones were fine.

**NADIA**  [02:57]
That was the original assumption and it was wrong. The warning now covers paraffin free emollients too. So warn the person, keep them away from naked flames and cigarettes, wash fabrics at a high temperature, and record the risk. And be aware that even high temperature washing does not fully remove the residue.

**AMARA**  [03:18]
What else?

**NADIA**  [03:19]
Smoking, including in bed. Oxygen therapy, which enriches the atmosphere so things ignite far more easily, and no oil or grease anywhere near it. Charging mobility scooters and lithium batteries. Portable heaters. Overloaded sockets.

**AMARA**  [03:32]
Last question, and it is the one people are afraid to ask. If somebody cannot be moved, do I stay?

**NADIA**  [03:40]
You act within your PEEP and your training, and you do not put yourself in a position where the fire service arrives to two casualties instead of one. That is not cowardice, it is the instruction. And you never re enter a building, and you never use a lift unless it is a designated evacuation lift.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, legislation.gov.uk
- Fire safety risk assessment: residential care premises, Home Office
- Emollients and fire risk drug safety update, MHRA
- Fire Safety Act 2021, legislation.gov.uk

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## Your role in the first two minutes

**Runtime** about 3 minutes. **Words** 504. **Starts at** 04:03 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- Act correctly on discovering a fire, in the right order
- Use the right extinguisher, and know when not to
- Assist an evacuation within your training and the person's PEEP
- Explain what happens after: roll call, handover and the fire service

### Script


`[CUE 1]` *Four step discovery sequence: alarm, call, close the door, move people.*

**AMARA**  [04:03]
Fire alarm goes. What do I do first?

**NADIA**  [04:06]
Raise the alarm, and that is genuinely first. Not check, not look, not think about whether it is real.

**AMARA**  [04:13]
But most alarms are toast.

**NADIA**  [04:15]
Most are, and that is exactly why people delay, and why the seconds get lost. In a care home those seconds decide whether you can move people sideways in time at all.

**AMARA**  [04:28]
Then the fire service?


`[CUE 2]` *A closed door holding a compartment for sixty minutes.*

**NADIA**  [04:30]
Call them, or confirm somebody has. And never assume the alarm did it. Some systems call automatically, plenty do not, and I thought it was automatic turns up in investigation reports.

**AMARA**  [04:42]
Then get people out.

**NADIA**  [04:44]
Close the door on the fire first. It takes a second and it buys the compartment thirty or sixty minutes. Then move people, in order of danger, into the next compartment.

**AMARA**  [04:56]
You keep coming back to doors.

**NADIA**  [04:59]
Because it is the single most effective thing one person can do in a building fire, it costs nothing, and it takes no time. Close doors behind you as you go.


`[CUE 3]` *Five extinguisher types with their fire classes and the two absolute prohibitions.*

**AMARA**  [05:11]
Extinguishers. There are five and I know none of them.

**NADIA**  [05:15]
Water for wood, paper and textiles. Foam for those plus flammable liquids. CO2 for electrical, no residue. Dry powder for nearly everything, and it destroys visibility instantly.

**AMARA**  [05:26]
Which sounds bad indoors.

**NADIA**  [05:27]
It is close to useless indoors in an occupied building, because you have just blinded everybody including yourself. And wet chemical for cooking oils, which is the kitchen one.

**AMARA**  [05:39]
What must I never do?


`[CUE 4]` *The four conditions for tackling a fire, with any failure routing to evacuate.*

**NADIA**  [05:41]
Water or foam on live electrics. And never water on a fat fire, which does not extinguish, it erupts.

**AMARA**  [05:49]
Should I fight a fire at all?

**NADIA**  [05:51]
Honestly? Usually not, and most training is too coy about this.

**AMARA**  [05:56]
Go on.

**NADIA**  [05:57]
Four conditions, all of them. It is small. You have a clear escape route behind you. You are trained on that extinguisher. And evacuation is already under way. Miss any one and you get people out instead.


`[CUE 5]` *Evacuation priority radiating out from the room of origin.*

**AMARA**  [06:11]
So what is the extinguisher actually for?

**NADIA**  [06:14]
Buying an escape route. Not firefighting. That is somebody else's job and they have breathing apparatus.

**AMARA**  [06:21]
How do I decide who to move first?

**NADIA**  [06:24]
By danger, not by preference. Room of origin first, then either side, then the rest of the compartment. And use each person's PEEP: the equipment it specifies and the number of staff it specifies.

**AMARA**  [06:37]
Evacuation sheets look simple enough.


`[CUE 6]` *Roll call including visitors, contractors and agency staff.*

**NADIA**  [06:39]
They look simple and they are not. Using one untrained on a stairway is dangerous for both of you. If you have not been trained on it, that is not your equipment today.

**AMARA**  [06:53]
And afterwards?

**NADIA**  [06:53]
Roll call, and it has to be accurate. Because if you get it wrong, the fire service will send people into a burning building to search for somebody who is standing in the car park.

**AMARA**  [07:07]
That is a horrible thought.

**NADIA**  [07:09]
It is why the roll call matters more than it looks. And make sure you know how your service accounts for visitors, contractors and agency staff, because none of them are on the rota you are holding.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Fire safety risk assessment: residential care premises, Home Office
- Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, legislation.gov.uk
- Fire extinguisher classes and use, Fire Industry Association

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