Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack spoke out on the 30th anniversary of the Gillender Street fire in Tower Hamlets, London which killed two firefighters who ran out of air.
Wrack has personal links to the tragedy, having worked at Kingsland fire station with one of the firefighters who died, and having attended the tragedy himself on behalf of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).
The fire, on 10 July 1991, claimed the lives of Terry Hunt and David Stokoe. The fire was not brought under control for several hours, and was attended by more than 25 fire engines. Breathing apparatus safety procedure was later criticised in relation to the fire.
Wrack has drawn a clear link between the tragedy and current attempts to weaken breathing apparatus regulations for today’s firefighters, saying that the progress made after this fire and several other tragedies is in danger of being turned back. There are currently moves to weaken breathing apparatus regulation, with the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) producing guidance to this end.
The NFCC guidance provides for firefighters to go beyond the entry control point at a fire (i.e. beyond where the air is safe) without turning their breathing apparatus on. The FBU has successfully argued that this is a risk to firefighter safety at a health and safety panel for the London Fire Brigade, but the NFCC guidance is yet to be withdrawn.
Yesterday, the FBU unveiled a red plaque to mark the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, and remember the firefighters who lost their lives. The union’s red plaques commemorate firefighters who died in the line of duty.
Matt Wrack said:“This was a tragic loss of life that has stayed with all concerned ever since and which devastated families and workmates. David and Terry did their duty and went into a dangerous warehouse fire, but paid with their lives. We continue to remember their bravery today, and they continue to be missed by family, friends and colleagues. At the FBU we are committed to remembering them, and fighting for firefighters‘ safety today.
“After the fire, we learnt lessons which informed later progress on breathing apparatus procedure. Yet attempts are now being made to try and weaken protections around breathing apparatus. This tragedy and tragedies like it show that this is never an option.”
The rapidly assembled Health and Safety Executive (HSE) task force to ensure effective controls when introducing new and novel sources of personal protective equipment (PPE) supply has been awarded an industry-leading accolade.
The British Occupational Health Society (BOHS) has recognised HSE’s efforts in putting together a unique team of specialists to assist the Government in their efforts in providing frontline health care workers with life-saving personal protective equipment (PPE), as a part of the UK coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic response.
The Peter Isaac award recognises “an outstanding initiative that has contributed to the reduction of ill health at work.” The HSE PPE technical team was assembled to respond to unprecedented global demand for PPE, not only to provide NHS workers with access to high-quality PPE, but also to conduct research, provide expertise, and support policy making and PPE practical guidelines across a whole variety of workplaces.
The awarded team comprised of experts in occupational hygiene, scientists, microbiologists and infection prevention specialists as well as policy-making experts, and support staff, who combined their skills and knowledge across a wide range of interrelated disciplines.
Working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Public Health England (PHE), Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the NHS and other government bodies, the HSE team evaluated materials and specifications against relevant PPE requirements, to rapidly provide agreement that new and novel sources of supply had been properly assessed and could be deployed to frontline workers without unnecessary delay.
HSE’s Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Andrew Curran said: ‘’This is a prestigious honour and richly deserved for the dedication and commitment where a rapidly assembled multidisciplinary team has delivered at pace on an unfamiliar topic.
‘’As a team we have drawn up specifications , facilitated rapid supply of PPE, conducted research, informed policy making and fostered innovation with the single aim of ensuring that personal protective equipment actually protects the healthcare workers wearing it.”
Alongside the Peter Isaac Award, a specialist occupational hygienist at HSE David Towler has also been awarded with the David Hickish Award as the best candidate of the year in completion of the BOHS Diploma of Professional Competence in Occupational Hygiene.
As COVID restrictions continue to be lifted, workplace safety will once again be vital as masses of workers begin to return to the office, but this time without safety measures such as social distancing and face masks. For this reason, BAFE have offered guidance for the removal or lifting of safety precautions.
Continue to exercise a risk-based approach prior to visiting a site to perform work
When returning, certain things must be considered. What is the current policy of your client? What requirements are they expecting you to follow when on-site? Do they require evidence of negative rapid lateral flow tests of technicians/engineers? What would you like them to do in helping reduce any risk of possible transmission to your employees?
Continue to wear a mask
This is especially important when indoors in areas with limited ventilation and/or high capacity of people within the space available. The World Health Organisation (WHO) continue to recommend mask wearing “as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to suppress transmission and save lives”. Government note “to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, published guidance will advise that wearing a face covering will reduce your risk and the risk to others, where you come into contact with people you don’t normally meet in enclosed and crowded spaces”.
Consider contacting clients with buildings that may require provisions/system maintenance visits prior to opening at full capacity
The last thing any business would like at this time is failure of any fire safety provisions in place causing disruption. Are any maintenance visits overdue? Help premises/business management be confident they can now operate “as normal” knowing they have exercised due diligence with their fire safety responsibilities.
BAFE trust that all BAFE Registered Companies will continue to exercise good judgment to keep employees, clients, and other people you may encounter safe. This includes the now habitual acts of washing/sanitising hands regularly, keeping rooms well ventilated, wearing masks on-site around others and importantly as pointed out by Government, “staying at home if unwell, to reduce the risk of passing on other illnesses onto friends, family, colleagues, and others in your community”. Rules vary between each country in the UK. As we begin the roadmap back to a relative normal environment, we strongly recommend continuing to review your own risk assessments concerning COVID-19 safety when guidance is updated by the appropriate Government.
IOSH have urged employers to manage health and safety risks following workplace fatality figures by the Health and Safety Executive, which has revealed that 142 people lost their lives in work-related accidents last year.
Ruth Wilkinson, Head of Health and Safety at IOSH, said: “Increases in fatalities are very concerning, but we must also remember that lockdown restrictions in 2019-2020 may have be a contributing factor to the previous year’s record low figures rather than improved risk management and prevention in the workplace.
“All 142 deaths last year were avoidable tragedies which will have left devastated families and friends having to come to terms with their loss. No one should have their life cut short by work, or through others’ work activities, which is why we must continue to reduce this number further through good health and safety management practices.
“Workplace deaths are only ever the tip of an iceberg of health and safety failure, which is why we encourage employers to ensure that they are managing the safety and health risks in their workplaces. This includes any new risks that may be presented through new operating models, new technology or equipment, and so on.”
Self-employed workers continue to be a greater risk of fatal injuries. In 2020-21, 38% of worker fatal injuries were to self-employed workers even though such workers made up only 16% of the workforce.
Another group of workers who are disproportionately affected are older workers. More than a quarter (27%) of workers killed were aged 60 or over, though they only account for ten per cent of the workforce.
Construction and agriculture, forestry and fishing again accounted for the highest number of deaths, with 39 and 34 recorded respectively. The most common cause of death across all sectors were falls from height (35) and being struck by a moving vehicle (25).
NEBOSH, the Health and Safety Executive and the British Safety Council to deliver a free online session on “COVID Impacts – sharing lessons learnt”
On the 28 July, experts from NEBOSH, the Health and Safety Executive and the British Safety Council will come together to share some of the lessons the health and safety industry has learnt during this time.
A range of topics will be covered including how COVID secure workplaces can be created, the relative protectiveness of a range of face shields, dealing with grief in the workplace and how the industry must rethink what is normal.
The two-hour online session is free and will take place from 8am UK time on the 28 July. A recording will be made available for those who register but cannot make the live session.
For more information or to register please click on the link.
Provisional data released today that focuses on workplace fatality has revealed that a total of 142 workers were killed at work in Great Britain in 2020/21, an increase of 29 from the previous year, though the number of deaths in 2019/20 (113) was low compared to other recent years.
In statistical terms the number of fatalities has remained broadly level in recent years – the average annual number of workplace fatality incidents recorded over the five years 2016/17-2020/21 is 136.
Over the past 20 years there has been a long-term reduction in the number of workplace fatalities, demonstrating that Great Britain is one of the safest places to work in the world.
HSE’s Chief Executive, Sarah Albon, said: “Whilst the working world in which we now live has created new health challenges for workers and for those who have a duty towards them, safety must also remain a priority. Whilst the picture has improved considerably over the longer term and Great Britain is one of the safest places to work in the world, every loss of life is a tragedy, we are committed to ensuring that workplaces are as safe as they can be and that employers are held to account and take their obligations seriously.”
The three most common causes of fatal injuries continue to be workers falling from height (35), being struck by a moving vehicle (25) and being struck by a moving object (17), accounting for more than half of fatalities in 2020/21.
These figures also continue to highlight the risks to older workers with around 30 per cent of fatal injuries in 2020/21 involving workers aged 60 or over, even though such workers only make up around 11 per cent of the workforce.
In addition, members of the public continue to be killed in connection with work-related incidents. In 2020/21, 60 members of the public were killed as a result of a work-related incident.
The figures for Mesothelioma, which is a cancer contracted through past exposure to asbestos and is one of the few work-related diseases where deaths can be counted directly, show 2,369 people died in Great Britain in 2019. This is seven per cent lower than the average of 2,540 deaths over the previous seven years.
Current mesothelioma deaths largely reflect occupational asbestos exposures that occurred before the 1980s. The figure for 2019 is consistent with projections that a reduction in total annual deaths would start to become apparent at this point. However, it is still not certain how quickly annual deaths will decline.
A fuller assessment of work-related ill-health and injuries, drawing on HSE’s full range of data sources, will be provided as part of the annual Health and Safety Statistics release on 16 December
BSI have welcomed the introduction of the Building Safety Bill, claiming that the bill will “bring a much needed change of culture to the entire Built Environment sector.”
Scott Steedman, Director-General, Standards at BSI said: “We welcome the new measures set out in the government’s Building Safety Bill. The Bill provides a new regulatory framework that will steer the improvement of practices in the design, construction and building management sector, particularly in relation to safeguarding the safety of residents in high-rise residential properties.
“BSI is working closely with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the new Building Safety Regulator to support the implementation of the Bill in our role as the UK National Standards Body. Our Built Environment Competence Standards programme, launched last year, will support the new legislation, along with the industry training and qualification schemes that will follow and provide a basis for third party accreditation of building safety competence at all levels and across all roles, functions, tasks and activities.
“We will be publishing specific standards aimed at the competence requirements of the three key roles regulated under the Building Safety Bill, which are those of Principal Designer, Principal Contractor and Building Safety Manager.
“Over time we expect that the combination of the new Bill and the competence standards will bring a much needed change of culture to the entire Built Environment sector and long term benefits to the public, living and working in buildings, to the workers in the sector and to the building owners.”
New measures in the Building Safety Bill introduced will:
Ensure there are clearly identified people responsible for safety during the design, build and occupation of a high-rise residential building.
Establish a Building Safety Regulator to hold to account those who break the rules and are not properly managing building safety risks, including taking enforcement action where needed.
Give residents in these buildings more routes to raise concerns about safety, and mechanisms to ensure their concerns will be heard and taken seriously.
Extend rights to compensation for substandard workmanship and unacceptable defects.
Drive the culture change needed across the industry to enable the design and construction of high-quality, safe homes in the years to come.
Commenting on the Building Safety Bill, Housing Secretary Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP said: ”This Bill will ensure high standards of safety for people’s homes, and in particular for high rise buildings, with a new regulator providing essential oversight at every stage of a building’s lifecycle, from design, construction, completion to occupation.
“The new building safety regime will be a proportionate one, ensuring those buildings requiring remediation are brought to an acceptable standard of safety swiftly, and reassuring the vast majority of residents and leaseholders in those buildings that their homes are safe.”
A company has been fined after its employees were exposed to the deadly substance asbestos. Power Link Machines (UK) Ltd was sentenced for safety breaches after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was informed the company was using gaskets within its generator sets that contained the substance.
Analysis by HSE’s Science Division confirmed the gaskets contained asbestos. The company was served with a Prohibition Notice on 26 March 2018 requiring them to stop the use of these gaskets and ensure that they did not import any asbestos containing items.
Leeds Magistrates’ Court heard that a second concern was received on 21 September 2018 stating that employees were being asked to work on a generator set, which contained gaskets which looked very similar to those found to contain asbestos earlier in the year. This unit had been imported from Power Link Machine (Shanghai) Co Ltd.
An investigation by HSE found that these gaskets also contained asbestos and as the generator set had been imported into this country, the company had breached the Prohibition Notice served in March 2018. The company subsequently allowed an untrained employee to remove these gaskets releasing asbestos fibres into the generator set and then asking two other employees to work within that generator set, exposing them to fibres.
Power Link Machines (UK) Ltd of Vickers Building, Hurricane Close, Sherburn in Elmet pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 (1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and breaching Regulation 9 (1) and Schedule 6, part 2, section 2 of the REACH enforcement regulations 2008. The company was fined £22,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,062.
In recent years there have been many horrifying incidents that have rocked our society and world abroad prompting investigation by way of coronial inquests which have delivered subsequent recommendations for improvement.
Some of those that come to mind are the Quakers Hill Nursing Home Fire, the Lindt Café Terrorist incident and internationally the horrific Grenfell Fire which claimed over 70 lives in June 2017.
Each incident shared a common problem, that being the lack of current building floor plans and emergency plans. In each event, first responders were without critical information required to run a rescue operation effectively. For instance, at the Lind Café siege, it took first responders more than 4 hours to obtain a floor plan from Sydney City Council, hindering them to understand the basics and potential for entering and evacuating the café itself.
One hostage had been slipping written messages with vital information under the evacuation door at the rear of the café but the Police didn’t know that door existed.
At the Quakers Hill fire, fire fighters could not locate the fire hydrant installed specifically for the building and used another they could identify on the other side of the street, this limited the reach of their equipment; the Grenfell disaster is still under investigation but we know that plans were unavailable and first responders had difficulty understanding which floors they were to evacuate out onto due to poor marking of levels on fire stairs, making it difficult to navigate through the burning building to evacuate occupants. The first three levels of Grenfell had a different lay-out to the remaining floors of the building, with fire fighters battling intense smoke were unable to navigate their way effectively.
A clear evacuation plan can help avoid disaster
Do you think your buildings would be better prepared?
As a result of the above findings, each inquest provided the following recommendations:
That the NSW Government provide funding for the instalment of mobile data terminals in Fire and Rescue NSW vehicles; That Fire and Rescue NSW develop a digital data base of pre-incident plans for use in major structural fires;
10. From the Coroner: “I recommend that the NSWPF investigate the development of an integrated intelligence system that allows selected officers secure access to all information platforms and to record and share operational decisions”
“It should be a simple matter for the owners or managers of high-rise buildings to provide their local fire and rescue services with current versions of such plans. I therefore recommend that the owner and manager of every high-rise residential building be required by law: a. to provide their local fire and rescue services with up-to-date plans in both paper and electronic form of every floor of the building identifying the location of key fire safety systems; b. to ensure that the building contains a premises information box, the contents of which must include a copy of the up-to-date floor plans and information about the nature of any lift intended for use by the fire and rescue services.
I also recommend, insofar as it is not already the case, that all fire and rescue services be equipped to receive and store electronic plans and to make them available to incident commanders and control room managers.”
Imagine you being confident that all this data for your buildings, including URL feed access to CCTV footage (eyes inside a building), floor plans, critical building information is collected and provided to Emergency Services….
For the past two years, Locatrix have been working on a solution that meets the recommendations and seeks to deliver First Responders better situational awareness. The ESP is a platform that delivers all data collected through PlanStudio and feeds it to first responders so they can essentially have eyes inside the buildings that they are sent to protect. Initially Federally funded, this service will enable a secure way to store and provide current plans (updated annually by certifiers who use the tool to create evacuation plans) directly to those who need it urgently.
PlanStudio, the input tool is one that is used today by NSW Fire and Rescue and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. It is a quick and accurate way to create high quality, spatially accurate and digital floor plans.
All data (securely stored in accordance with ISO27001) has been offered to emergency services for access when they need to, in the case of an emergency.
In addition to floor plans, Locatrix’s PlanSafe product delivers site specific building emergency procedures as a learning outcome, providing another level of safety and compliance. Again, due to the business model whereby certifiers update this information annually, PlanSafe enables the collection and delivery of up to date data such as the Warden Structure of a facility, the contact names and numbers of the Emergency Control Organisation and the Emergency Evacuation Plan. PlanSafe provides building occupants with site specific instructions as to how they are to escape a building and also any alternative solutions that building engineers have specified in the structure.
ESP and PlanStudio can provide Emergency Services a building’s critical information, giving confidence that the information is current and available for when it is needed.
Lee Johnson, retired Fire Commissioner for Queensland Fire and Emergency Services and Advisory member of Locatrix is clearly impressed by Locatrix’s vision “The potential for this tool [ESP] is enormous, and I’m really excited to have a hand in the evolution of the product, as well as oversee its continued development”.
Chris Auger, Director of Schemes, joins Interim Industry Competence Committee (IICC)
BAFE are proud to announce that Chris Auger, Director of Schemes, has accepted an invitation from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to be a member of the Interim Industry Competence Committee (IICC).
The committee has been established to act in an advisory position which will support the HSE’s Building Safety Regulator (BSR). The committee will aid in developing new regulatory measures regarding life safety within the new and current built environment.
Chris Auger expressed his thoughts commenting: “I am extremely honoured to have been invited onto the IICC which I have gratefully accepted. The work of the IICC will play an important role in supporting the shadow Building Safety Regulator and raising competence across the built environment and fire sectors”.
Stephen Adams, Chief Executive – BAFE, added: “Alongside his role within BAFE, Chris is involved with a number of the Hackitt working groups and committees. With this brings a wide range of knowledge and understanding of the current fire safety industry regarding evidencing competency and where this can improve to support the work of our quality registered companies. We look forward to stronger regulation of the fire safety industry”
