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.
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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.
Safety & Health Practitioner
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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.
‘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!
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!