In today’s modern society, the rules regarding fire safety in buildings are relatively straightforward: check the dry risers, the fire doors and the illuminated exit signs that guide people towards the stairs. However, applying these same rules to a 12th-century Norman castle with three-meter-thick stone walls and a spiral staircase that can only accommodate one person at a time presents a challenge for fire risk assessors.
The Grade I listing of such castles shows that drilling any holes into the walls is prohibited, as is installing any objects that could damage the existing structure. So, the rules regarding fire safety in such locations are different altogether.
Assessments of historic structures, whether castles, churches or even subterranean Cold War bunkers, must avoid installing objects into the structures that would require drilling, bolting or otherwise damaging them. Heritage keeping laws control such actions and the structures are protected from such damage by their heritage listing itself.
To address the challenges of assessing fire safety risks within such locations, fire safety engineers apply fire safety designing to the assessments. Instead of requiring the location to meet current fire safety codes and standards, engineers use models of how fire and smoke behave within those locations to determine the most appropriate safety measures to take.
For example, in the case of large, cavernous medieval churches with high vaulted ceilings, smoke takes considerably longer to reach head height within the structure. This allows for the installation of sensitive ASD systems that can detect smoke within the structures at the earliest possible moment, as they are capable of sampling air within the structure through micro-capillary tubes hidden within the structure’s architectural elements.
Evacuation processes must also be assessed differently in these locations, as well. For instance, subterranean locations with few exits require careful management of the number of people allowed into the location during a fire event, use of radio-linked fire wardens or the installation of LED lighting within the location’s floors rather than making changes to the location itself. For Fire Risk Assessment Bristol, visit keloscape.co.uk/areas-we-cover/fire-safety-consultancy-bristol/
Lastly, certain aspects of a location, such as wooden beams within the structure, may be covered in intumescent coating to protect them from the high temperatures that can result from a fire, while remaining visually untouched by the coating.
Overall, then, the goal of fire safety assessors for such locations is to use creative solutions to ensure the fire safety of those locations, using technology and strategies that do not harm or destroy the existing structure of the location.
