Informa Markets

Author Bio ▼

Safety and Health Practitioner (SHP) is first for independent health and safety news.
September 10, 2013

Get the SHP newsletter

Daily health and safety news, job alerts and resources

Hospital’s fire door disrepair revealed in undercover video

The woeful state of the fire doors in a major city hospital has been revealed in a Youtube video of secret footage by a fire door campaigner.

The campaigner, known online as Theodore Firedoor, filmed in the hospital after attempts to persuade the estates management team to undertake maintenance of the hospital proved fruitless. He uncovered serious damage to the fire doors and bodged repairs.

“Many hospitals have a ‘stay put’ policy as part of their fire strategy, because obviously it’s not practical to evacuate very ill patients or somebody during surgery. That’s why hospitals rely especially on fire doors providing the intended fire separation,” said the campaigner.

“So here, of all places, these fire doors pose extremely serious safety implications for the people using the building. There are no excuses, this is addressed in the Fire Safety Order and there’s clear guidance for building managers in BS 9999.”

The campaign is supported by the Fire Door Inspection Scheme, which runs a European scheme to provide independent certification for fire door professionals and others responsible for the fire safety of buildings.

The BBC is showing an Inside Out programme  this week on fire safety, with its secret filming of hotel fire safety measure. Next week also sees the inaugural Fire Door Safety Week.

 

Fire Safety in 2023 eBook

SHP's sister site, IFSEC Insider has released its annual Fire Safety Report for 2023, keeping you up to date with the biggest news and prosecution stories from around the industry.

Chapters include important updates such as the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and an overview of the new British Standard for the digital management of fire safety information.

Plus, explore the growing risks of lithium-ion battery fires and hear from experts in disability evacuation and social housing.

Related Topics

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Alastair Weston
Alastair Weston
10 years ago

With all the other activities that are going on in a hospital, I would envisage that fire doors are quite some way down the priority list- rightly or wrongly.

Jane Puncher
Jane Puncher
10 years ago

‘Quite some way down the priority list’ – this should be easy to manage and not need to be prioritised – basic management checks! Outrageous lack of sensible control measures!

Paul Allaway
Paul Allaway
10 years ago

I would agree that there are some shortfalls… but I’m sure that they are trying to spend their extremely low budget (given to them by our government – Who legislate on the RRO!) on trying to sustain a failing NHS Service..

What is their fire loss experience? How close are they to Fire Station… detection systems and alarms etc? I agree with Alastair above.!

Theodore Firedoor obviously has a firedoor company! We could all pick faults in warehouse floors if were concrete suppliers? Man Regs!