Increase Fire Safety in Hotel/Motel Guest Rooms
FIRE PREVENTION
Statistics show that about 9,000 hotel and motel fires occur annually in the United States, resulting in at least 80 deaths.
Besides the fatalities, injuries, and property damage, hotel management also faces a growing fire bill in terms of insurance and litigation. A number of guests are concerned enough to request rooms on lower floors or to ask about sprinklers, no-smoking floors, and flame-resistant furnishings.
To increase fire safety in hotel/ motel guest rooms, a number of basic measures can be taken. The major precautions to follow in preventing, detecting, and fighting these fires are covered in this article.
PREVENTING FIRES
The ounce of prevention that’s worth a pound of cure certainly applies in fire protection. It is always more efficient, effective, and economical to prevent a fire than to undergo the problems and expense of putting one out
Fire-resistant furnishings
A new method of preventing fires in guest rooms is through the use of fire-resistant fabrics and furnishings—bedspreads, draperies, mattress and pillow tickings, upholstery fabrics and interliners, shower curtains, and wall coverings.
Most fire safety measures aim at protecting life and property by limiting the spread of fire. The goal should be to prevent fires from starting, and here is where the use of fire-resistant fabrics can be a big help. According to a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report, fires in which textiles are the first to ignite result in more deaths and injuries than do fires involving any other class of materials.
One of the best fire-resistant fabrics is material woven from specially-coated, inorganic fibers. Unlike many others rated “fireresistant” by current testing, these fabrics will not ignite, burn, melt, or drip even when exposed to direct flame and temperatures up to 1,300°F.”’ They are inexpensive compared to reconstruction, and their installation (adding a new mattress, drapes, etc.) does not keep a room out of service, even for one night.
* Burlington Industries Inc. is one of the manufacturers of these fire-resistant fabrics, and markets its product under the name Sandel.
Fire-resistive construction
In this article, we assume that the hotel or motel already exists and its walls, floors, ceilings, doors, and windows meet the required fire and building codes.
Keeping that in mind, there are preventive measures (besides the room-wide use of fire-safe fabrics) to limit the possibility of a fire.
Renovation construction is one opportunity to bring a structure up to current fire protection standards. Some codes stipulate that if the value of rehabilitation is more than 50% of the value of the building, the entire building must be brought up to code. All reconstruction should take pains to ensure that penetrations of fire-rated building elements (pipes, ducts, and cables) have the original integrity restored when construction is completed. Seal those penetrations with approved firestop practices.
As we all know, confining fire and smoke within a limited area is the most effective way of minimizing danger to life and property. Ideally, all guest room doors should be self-closers so that any fire is isolated in its room of origin. Doors that close off a wing of a building should have the same automatic compartmentalizing feature, triggered by a built-in or adjoining smoke detector.
Other measures
A match carelessly tossed onto rubbish is a frequent cause of hotel fires, so good housekeeping practices are a practical precaution. Recommended procedures for preventing fires include removing rubbish from hallways and supply closets, having trash /linen chutes clear and sprinklered, and storing flammable liquids in approved safety cans.
Employees should be trained in fire prevention and control. Local fire departments often offer or require such training, and they should certainly be called in to inspect and recommend fire safety measures and be given blueprints of the premises that pinpoint utility shut-off locations.
The local fire department’s program for training hotel personnel should include:
- Review of the hotel’s fire control plan and each employee’s role in it.
- How to summon assistance of the fire department.
- Use and limits of extinguishers and other fire control equipment.
- How to communicate a fire situation to guests.
- The understanding and use of a hotel’s evacuation system.
- Keeping personnel turnover in mind, such training should be reviewed at regular intervals.
- Other fire safety measures that should be considered in hotel and motel establishments are:
- Placing literature in the rooms to thoroughly brief guests on how to prevent and react to a fire.
- Using combustion-modified foam cushioning in upholstered furniture in addition to fire-resistant fabrics will provide an added degree of protection.
- Using fire-retardant epoxy paint systems or fire-resistant fabrics are suggested for wall and ceiling coatings or coverings.
DETECTING A FIRE AND SPREADING THE ALARM
Smoke detectors
Two types of smoke sensors are adequate for hotel/motel applications: The photoelectric unit is often chosen to detect smoldering fires before they grow; the ionization units, more sensitive and reliable than the photoelectric ones, are used in areas of more rapid combustion, such as stockrooms.
Some units can be adjusted to disregard normal smoking and avoid false alarms. Some detectors feature a delayed-action response of 15 to 30 seconds, allowing the sensor to overlook the short-term stimuli of a friendly fire, i.e., a guest lighting a cigar.
Ideally, each room’s smoke detector should be placed in the ceiling over the bed, but most adjoin the room’s exit door. Normally, the detector only sounds in that room, though it could be tied in to a general system. Ideally, each detector should transmit an alarm signal to an annunciator panel at the front desk or other well-attended station to identify the location of a potential fire by room, wing, or floor. The hotel’s fire control plan would then be operative.
Alarms
Several fire alarm pull-stations per floor are usually code mandated and placed in hallways and near elevators. These relay a fire message to the front desk and/or a central alarm monitoring office that alerts the fire department.
Alarm and voice communications systems, activated in a hotel’s fire plan, can include bells, horns, sirens, hotel-wide public address speakers in corridors and rooms, and phone systems that ring automatically in all or selected guest rooms. Where available, guests can be requested to turn on the cable television channel for news or evacuation instructions. Verbal instructions or assurance is espedally important because panic is preventable when guests have accurate information.
Ptxrtos courtesy of Burlington IncJustries
Handicapped guests
As part of a fire plan, hotels may wish to set aside rooms for handicapped guests so that they can be provided with special handling in a fire situation. Some motels do this by supplying handicapped guests with tags to hang on their room doors. To alert these guests to an actual fire emergency their rooms can be equipped with flashing/strobe lights or bed vibrators.
Evacuation
Every hotel and motel should have a guest evacuation plan. A floor plan on each guest room door should list emergency instructions and show the location of hallways, fire exits, pull-alarms, and extinguishers, as well as the location of that room (“you are here”).
Elevators should be programmed so that when a fire warning occurs, the cars go to the elevator lobby, usually the ground floor, and either become inoperable or usable only by firefighters. Building exit facilities are extremely important and, therefore, heavily regulated by codes. Fire exit doors (with push bars) and stairwells should be unobstructed and be clearly marked and lighted. Hallways and stairwells should have low-level directional signs and floor markings leading to the exits.
EXTINGUISHING A FIRE
Fire department
When a fire does occur, hotel/motel employees should be told to call the fire department immediately and give the hotel name, address, the fire’s location in the building and its severity, if known. The sooner the firefighters are called, the better the chances of lives saved and damage reduced.
Sprinklers
Unfortunately, only 3% of hotel rooms in the United States are sprinklered. That’s a fact, even though automatic sprinklers do provide a savings in insurance, require fewer fire exits and fire-rated doors, and, in an existing hotel, have an installed cost only twice that of new construction. A few hotels even charge an extra $1 a night for sprinklered rooms.
Just as fire-resistant fabrics are the key to fire prevention, the key to fire control is containing flame spread via sprinklers. Sprinklers are approximately 90% effective.
Generally, today’s sprinkler heads are heat activated at about 135°F, with most new construction codes mandating a sprinkler every 10 square feet. In guest rooms, one ceiling sprinkler is usually positioned in the sleeping area, one in the bathroom, and sometimes one in a walk-in closet. At times, a sidewall sprinkler can be positioned to cover an extra-large room. To minimize water damage, some sprinklers turn off and reset automatically as the fire is extinguished and the room temperature drops.
Standpipes
Standpipes, which are sometimes required by code or law, should be tested periodically for operating conditions and water pressure. It is recommended that employees be trained in the connection valve operation and hose/nozzle handling techniques even though standpipes are used mostly by firefighting professionals.
Fire extinguishers
Code mandated as to type, amount, mounting, and location, portable fire extinguishers should be able to put out the three most common classes of hotel/motel fires: Class A, which includes such combustibles as paper, wood, and furnishings; Class B, which involves flammable liquids like grease, paint, and cleaning fluid; and Class C, which includes electrical wires, switches, and appliances.
Smoke control
One of the most dangerous aspects of a hotel/motel fire is its toxic byproducts, the cause of almost all fatalities and injuries. To confine smoke and gases close to the fire source, hinged dampers can be installed in a ventilating duct and activated to block the transfer of smoke and gases to unaffected areas. Maintenance employees should be assigned to keep dampers clear and operative.
A systematic venting of smoke, heat, and fire gases from the building is also essential, especially since many of today’s guest room windows do not open. Automatic or manual roof vents can serve this smoke-release purpose, with some designed to open automatically at predetermined temperatures or smoke concentrations.
