Fire Door Safety Week commemorates Great Fire of London
26th September – 2nd October 2016
Fire Door Safety Week is a little under 2 months away and It is already shaping up to be the biggest and best yet, with cross industry support and a growing army of high profile backers contributing to a range of activities and creative plans that also commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, the event which gave rise to the ‘fire door’.
The campaign builds on previous years and runs from 26 September – 2 October 2016, spotlighting the critical role that fire doors play in fire safety within buildings and drawing attention to common-place bad practice that risks property and lives.
Thanks to the efforts of participants last year, the vital message regarding fire door safety reached an estimated audience of 6 million people – this year we should do even better.
Lots of ways to get involved
Support for the campaign has already been pledged from South Wales, West Midlands and London Fire and Rescue Services, as well as a significant number of companies in the door and hardware industries. It is also backed by the Government’s Fire Kills campaign, the Fire Sector Federation, the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP) and Children’s Burns Trust.
A number of supporters have already begun arranging events to take place during Fire Door Safety Week, including Arnold Laver, Gerda, Vetrotech, ASFP, PFPF and Lorient UK. London Fire Brigade is working with the British Woodworking Federation to deliver a fire door safety conference to its fire safety teams across London on 29 September 2016.
You can pledge your support on the website via www.firedoorsafetyweek.co.uk or if you are interested in organising an event email hannah.mansell@bwf.org.uk and we’ll make contact to see how we can help support/promote it.
Click It, Kick It wages war on the lethal fire door wedge
In the Click It, Kick It campaign anyone who sees a fire door being wedged open is urged to take a photo (Click It), to share on social media using the hashtag #ClickItKickIt, and then to kick the wedge away (Kick It) so the door can close. It is important that any instances where fire doors have been wedged open are reported to the building owner or manager.
Any confiscated or donated wedges will feature in a piece of artwork that will be unveiled at a reception on 2 September. The event, hosted by BWF-Certifire, marks 350 years to the day since the Great Fire of London broke out.
For every wedge donated, BWF-Certifire will be donating an amount of money to the Children’s Burns Trust.
For more info on donating wedges click here
Beyond this you can get involved by promoting the toolkit
The Fire Door Safety Week website offers tailored support to those who are responsible for fire safety. This advice covers a range of sectors including housing, hotels, commercial buildings schools and hospitals. Any help you can lend in cascading this to your network is gratefully received. Everything in the online toolkit is freely available and includes technical checklists to help with fire door inspections, videos and posters and signage designed to educate people on basic fire door rules.
There are also many other ways to get involved, including promoting the message of Fire Door Safety Week on websites and social media, cascading resources, sending any images of dodgy fire doors or wedged open doors and follow @FDSafetyWeek on Twitter for campaign news and updates, or look out for tweets using the hashtag #FireDoorSafetyWeek.
All activities will be coordinated via the website www.firedoorsafetyweek.co.uk which features a marketing toolkit, including free-to-download resources and guides to support anyone who specifies, manages or has responsibility to maintain fire doors.