The Potential Hazards and Risk Posed by the Hazards - Essay Example

Risk Management Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Analysis and identification of the potential hazards and risk posed by the hazards 4 Control and reduction of the impacts and undertaking a ‘Risk Assessment’ 5 Risk Assessment 5 Relevant Health & Safety legislation 7 Fire & Rescue Services Act 2004 8 Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) 9 Conclusion 11 References 12 Bibliography 14 Introduction Risk Management is one of the main issues relating to fire and rescue operation in modern day scenario. Due to present day modernisation and vibrant culture among the youths of every country, the need for preparing a stable and flexible risk management plan is at the highest priority for every fire and rescue team. Accommodation centres of students are a prime target for fire related hazards. The hazards are generally drawn out from some unruly behaviour that arises due to student clashes or some other violence. The Risk Management method used of a Fire and Rescue team has to look for innovative ways to tackle potential hazards that may arise at any point of time. Student lifestyle is a contributing factor in relation to hazards like smoke inhalation, burning. The fire fighting and rescue team also needs to have a contact with paramedical team to tackle this situation which requires quick action and thinking on their feet. The Fire & Rescue Service Act, 2004 has been developed keeping in mind the potential hazards that may occur in places like student accommodations and also other fire and hazard sensitive places. An integrated risk management plan if prepared at an early stage can help the fire and rescue team to prepare themselves better to tackle any fire related situation. Analysis and identification of the potential hazards and risk posed by the hazards Risk Management and potential hazards are common situation through out the world. Due to present day modernisation and changing lifestyle people are becoming more prone to hazards like fire, smoke inhalation, burns, and cuts in almost all the places including students’ accommodations. The safety and security of people at the distressed situation becomes an extremely difficult task for fire and rescue team. To tackle this scenario they have to be preparing themselves to tackle any kind of situation and also to save precious lives as much as they can. Potential hazards which can cause harm to people and to their belongings can be both caused by nature like earthquakes, floods, storms, forest fires, flash floods and also from non-natural sources like fire, electric related hazards like shock, falling of tiles from the roof, cuts, and accidents. The risks involved in all this hazards are different in nature so to tackle them there has to be contingency plan for each situation. The fire and service team maintains a philosophy in managing risks like they give importance to saving lives the most. Then they look to save property which can be saved after any hazard like scenario, they generally don’t risk their lives while saving the properties and lives which are already lost. Hazards at different places can be of varying in nature like for e.g. in workplaces the hazard are like accidental, noise hazards in case of workers working in a workshop or factory, chemical hazards in case of working in a chemical laboratory. In case of student accommodation fire hazards are mainly the primary cause of any disastrous situation. Fire can be caused by fire from students smoking, electrical fire, and fire from cooking scenario in the accommodations. The first aid prevention, safety exit location, fire drills are all safety measures that should be administered to the students to prevent such situations (Selwyn College Cambridge, n.d.). These hazards can many a times be life threatening so to prevent such scenario, local fire stations has a big part to play. In case of natural hazards like earthquakes, floods the risk management comes into play. The fire and rescue team has to look to accommodate themselves with latest tools and techniques to tackle any potentially damaging scenario. Control and reduction of the impacts and undertaking a ‘Risk Assessment’ The potential hazards and situations caused by different risk scenario can have an impact on all the people including the students. So, to tackle the scenario a Risk Assessment has to be conducted. Risk Assessment Risk Assessment has become a very important issue in every situation. Risk Assessment has been a requirement in every location like workplaces and student accommodations. The risk assessment can provide the protection team like the fire and rescue team a prior understanding of the potential scenario which may arise and how should one handle such situation. The health and safety legislation has made it a requirement for all the workplaces and also in other vulnerable areas to be looked at carefully and assessed to prevent and tackle any situation, like fire. Risk Assessment can be done by following certain steps to tackle and prevent any scenario that might cause any harmful situation. The steps include identification of potential hazards, identifying the people who at the centre of the hazards and risks, identifying the present situation regarding controlling the hazards, evaluation of the risk and how dangerous is the potential risk, identifying the precautionary measures, recording the findings of the assessment and implementing them later to tackle such scenario from occurring again, reviewing the entire assessment and updating the present control measures if required. Identifying the potential hazards scenario deals with finding out the important situations and areas that are vulnerable. This can be done observing, experiencing, speaking to the susceptible persons. Accidental, near miss, ill health related data, hazards crib pages, and workplace inspection can make it easier to assess the potential risk. In case of student accommodation, the fire related hazardous areas like electric meter box, wears used in the electrical wiring, cooking materials, fire causing inflammable material, fire preventing materials should all be assessed to prevent and protect from such scenarios. The identification of people at risk can also help in preventing fire related scenarios. At the students’ accommodations, all the students are at risk. Work places are also at risk, so the staffs, maintenance personnel, workers all come in to potential risk zone. Inexperienced and young working people, disabled people are at more vulnerable situation in case of fire related alerts. Therefore, existing prevention measures has to be looked after to mitigate and prevent any potential hazard. For students’ accommodation existing fire prevention, first aid materials, fire exit locations are all to be properly assessed. The existing findings related to prevention and rescue situation should be analysed to review on fire and other hazards prevention situation. If the scenario requires any modification then it should be done with immediate effect to prevent any lapse in future. Relevant Health & Safety legislation In the process of risk assessment it can be seen that the health and safety regulation is very much required. The British health and safety law was the basis for Health and Safety at work etc Act 1974. Health and Safety Commission (HSC) decided on a review of the regulations in 1994. It was done to amend on some confusion in the regulation regarding accepted practices of given codes, guidance’s, regulations. The act provides some important framework and duties that one should abide by. This includes duties related to employers towards their employees and also to the public, also duties employees have to one another and to oneself. The act tells about the necessary scenarios that can be avoided and people should be careful about. The legislation requires the employers and the relevant people to properly take on a risk assessment program to mitigate and prevent any unfortunate thing from occurring. In the risk assessment the health and safety scenarios are given absolute importance (Government of UK, n.d.) Setting up crisis related procedures, training an employee, providing clear instruction during training are all given importance. For student accommodations health and safety standards are generally related to fire safety situation, safety from electrical mishaps, gas related situations, security from external threats like theft, kitchen services, washing facilities, food storing situation, regular cleaning of the rooms and surroundings, furnishing are all looked into (University of Bristol, 2009). Apart from the act the health and safety legislations are very important in this respect. Management of health and safety at work regulations 1999 is an important legislation which tells about the need for carrying out risk assessment at work place. Other relevant legislations were also put in place from time to time to protect people from any potential hazards and also make the relevant authority aware of the need for prevention against any potential damaging situation. Fire & Rescue Services Act 2004 Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 was basically an amendment to its predecessor of the act formulated in 1947. It was done with a new framework and legislation. This was done to reform the existing ideas according to the present day 21st century scenario. The act provides maximum importance on prevention in case of fire and rescue scenario. Fire safety is given paramount importance for the fire and rescue establishment. Promoting safety measures in communities, vulnerable societies are given priority (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, n.d.). The act also looks into the changing of role for the fire fighters from conventional fire fighting to present day services like rescuing people from accidents, floods, earthquakes and terror attacks. The act also provides the local authorities of fire and rescues a full liberty in preparing themselves and responding to any sort of local risks. They are also asked to participate in integrated risk management plan. This includes specialist activities like rope-rescue, co-responding proposals, and health and fire scenarios. The act also integrates the existing national framework and strategic guidance to the relating local fire and rescue operations. The amended acts give prime importance to the prevention of all fire and rescue related activities. In present day scenario, the vulnerabilities and mode of accidents have increased. Therefore prevention is given the main priority rather than rescuing from any hazards (Office of public sector information, 2004). Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) Integrated risk management plan deals with developing a well balanced preparation by the fire and rescue services for preventing the risks for the community. It is considered as the combination of protection, prevention, response mechanism on assessed risks. This method is undertaken to improve safety of the people as well as the fire fighters (Isle of Man, 2006). An effective IRMP can provide with certain benefits according to the government authority. The benefit factor includes identifying potential and existing risks and hazards to all the relevant people, evaluating the effectiveness of existing response arrangement and preventive measures, identifying prospects for improving and determining standards and policies for intervention, prevention and also determining requirements of resources for meeting the set standards and policies. An effective service relating to fire and rescue can handle certain scenarios pretty effectively like lowering the times that fire and other related hazards takes place, reducing the loss of lives because of fire and accidents, reducing severity of damage to people such as injuries, also to reduce economic, commercial, social impact that might occur because of fire, preventing the environment and global, local heritages from any untoward incident. Integrated risk management incorporates prevention, protection and intervention. Prevention deals with advising the people who are at most risk situation, providing guidance for lowering the risks. Protection deals with fire and safety enforcements, working as a team to reduce other scenarios emergency like scenario. Intervention is a part of IRMP that deals with fire fighting, environmental activities and rescue acts. Integration of all this can provide a safer work area as well as a safer community. For fire related IRMP measures up gradation on existing fire protection mechanism including the fire protection equipment of the fire fighters, their toolbox all have to look after to protect themselves for alarming scenarios. The use of pathfinder trails has also been used by local fire prevention authority. The data collected from earlier mishaps and rescue operation can provide an excellent opportunity to study the earlier failures and prevent such things from occurring again. Fire and Rescue team should also incorporate themselves with maps, plans of local buildings, locations where the rescue might be needed for rescuing any alert call. They should also look into their present mechanism of rescue and look for improvements in future. The National Community Fire Safety Centre is recognized as a guide for providing support to fire authority. The IRMP can provide a basis for the authority to tackle any situation relating to fire and other hazards. Such example of proper integrated planning reducing the fire and other hazards can be seen at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, n.d.). From the statistics it can be seen that by implementing the plan there is a marked improvement in fire and rescue related rescue and prevention situation. The analysis of the existing risk assessment also helps in providing the scenarios for preventing the fire and rescue related occurrences. The analysis should be done to find out on the number of incidents that have occurred in a certain period of time in a certain place. Number of fire and no fire related false alarms also is looked upon by the authority concerned. Also, some situations like seriousness of the situation, causes of the incidents, the number of casualties, fatal injuries have to be looked very carefully to prepare a responding plan and also to better the existing prevention plan. Determination of required resource for fulfilling the plan is a vital tool in the IRMP. The resource has to be placed in a proper order to tackle any scenario. The foremost requirements include the staffing like the fire fighters. They have to be properly trained in the prevention methods to handle any situation, Also local fire station has to be well equipped with amenities of fire fighting like ladders, water. The fire fighters dress also has to be included with modern fire prevention materials. All these can help in solving and tackling the fire related situation. Conclusion Risk Management is associated with proper risk assessment. In present day scenario, fire and other hazards can occur in any place like students’ accommodations or offices. The fire hazards can cause severe damage to life and property. To prevent and protect people from potential hazards all sorts of modern mechanism should be utilised. The risk assessment is a vital part of protecting people from hazards. A proper assessment of risk related areas can help in preventing the fire related hazards. Risk assessment should be made mandatory in all the places. The Health and safety Act can also help the fire and rescue team to be ready with modern preventive rules. Also, the Fire and safety Act 2004 has helped the authority to put maximum emphasis on fire prevention. This has made all the relevant authorities to look for ways to firstly tackle and think of prevent in workplaces. Better safety and health measures have been given the priority in the legislation for all the employees of a workplace. The fire and rescue team to look for extension in their work requirements. They have now look to do other tasks than their existing fire fighting by indulging themselves in several rescue tasks like accidental, floods, terror attacks. The risk management has taken a complete new dimension in present day scenario from the past. It has been considered as primary requirement for each and every national and local calamity. References Government of UK, No Date. Health and safety regulation. Health & Safety Executive. [Online] Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hsc13.pdf [Accessed June 02, 2010]. Isle of Man, 2006. Integrated Risk Management Plan. Fire and Rescue Service. [Online] Available at: http://www.iomfire.com/irmp/IRMP_FULL.pdf [Accessed June 04, 2010]. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, No Date. Risk Management Plan 2008-11. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, No Date. Fire & Rescue Services Act 2004 - Key Factsheet 2. Focus on prevention. Office of Public Sector Information, 2004. Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. CONTENTS [Online] Available at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/ukpga_20040021_en_1 [Accessed June 04, 2010]. Selwyn College Cambridge, No Date. Student Accommodation Handbook. Health and Safety. [Online] Available at: http://www.sel.cam.ac.uk/college/AccommodationHandbook.pdf [Accessed June 04, 2010]. University of Bristol, 2009. Health & Safety Standards and Procedures. Accommodation Office. [Online] Available at: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/accommodation/uuk/hands.html [Accessed June 04, 2010]. Bibliography Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service, No Date. Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP). What is Integrated Risk Management Planning? [Online] Available at: http://www.cheshirefire.gov.uk/aboutus.asp?menuid=676 [Accessed June 04, 2010]. Frenkel. M & Et.Al. Risk management: challenge and opportunity. Springer, 2005. Wilder, S. S. Risk Management in the Fire Service. PennWell Books, 1997 Read More