Studies Regarding Fire Protection and Safety
a. Fire safety scenarios
A fire safety scenario estimates the technical conditions insured by the present legal regulations and the actions that must be taken in case of a fire to fulfil the essential requirements for “safety in case of a fire”.
The provisions of the methodology for the development of fire safety scenarios, approved through Order 129/25 August 2016 for the approval or methodological norms regarding the approval and authorisation for fire safety and civil protection, apply for the analysation and evaluation of the interdependence between performance levels through the technical and organisational measures, the conditions for insuring intervention and the technical means of fire defence.
Fire safety scenarios are developed and applied to building categories established by legislation (civil buildings, historical monuments, residential buildings, accommodation buildings, hospitals, offices, etc.) or other categories not included in the legal documents, if requested by the owner or beneficiary. These specialist documents are carried out by designers or professional internal emergency services personnel with credentials in this field.
The fire safety scenarios are developed and apply for the categories if constructions established by law (civil buildings, historical monuments, residential buildings, housing buildings, hospitals, offices, and so on) or other categories that are not included in the legal documents, if the owner or the beneficiary requests them. These specialty documents are made by professional planners or by the staff from the private danger response unit, having ties with the respective domain.
The fire safety scenarios are attached to the construction project and include the rules and defense measures against fire hazard established through technical planning or execution documentations developed and approved. Moreover, there rules and measures must be reflected in the drawings of the execution/planning documentation. Fire safety scenarios are updated each time major modifications of the project or of the construction destination take effect and they lose their validity when they do not correspond anymore to the situation that they were drafted for.
b. Identification and assessment of fire risk
Fire is a phenomenon that affects important domains of activity regarding economic and social life, like buildings, installations, arrangements or landscapes, forests, transport means, crop cultures, etc., being defined as a combustion initiated by a well determined cause, with or without man’s will, gotten out of control, after which great material loss ensues and for which immediate halt necessitates specialized intervention using adequate means.
As a result, fire safety has been and will continue to be a major concern for every community. Identification of fire risk represents the process of assessing and determining the fire risk (for civil buildings), respectively of the categories of fire danger (for storage and production buildings), in certain circumstances, in the same time and space.
The probability of a fire occurring is based on statistical fire data or mathematical models, in cases where statistics do not dispose of necessary data.
Fire risk assessment is a process of estimating and quantifying the risk associated with a system, determined on the basis of the probability of a fire and its consequences of the event producing, as well as comparing the risk with a predetermined limit level.
This process takes into consideration the causes and the development of fires, the measures and the security systems provided for the limitation of the propagation of fires and for reducing their consequences.
c. Emergency response plans
Planning aims to develop and implement effective plans that will contain all the actions necessary to reduce the consequences of an unwanted event.
Emergency response plans offer provisions and measures to ensure that emergency response operations are carried out in a timely and efficient manner. These plans are updated every time it is necessary, taking into account the real scenarios.
Response plans include general data about the economic operator and the unit plan (emplacement, installation, access ways, and so on), but also detailed data regarding the design and organisation for fire response, the fire-fighting forces (private or public fire-fighting services), the sources of water supply outside the establishment (flow rate, network pressure and location of hydrants) and the layout of each building, technological installation or storage platform.
d. Fire protection plan
Fire protection plans, according to current legislation (Order nr. 163/28 February 2007 for the approval of general norms of defense against fires) are:
– the evacuation plan for persons;
-storage and evacuation plan for materials classified as dangerous according to the present legislation;
-intervention plan.
Intervention plans include elements and measures to ensure the that intervention operations are carried out in an efficient and effective manner in the event of an emergency
These fire protection plans are part of the entire ensemble of activities of prevention meant to eliminate, or where this is impossible, to reduce the risk of a dangerous situation occurring and its consequences, for protection of the people, of their goods and of the environment.