Hospital Fire Doors Weaknesses Exposed

Secret filming has revealed the below-par standard of fire doors in a UK hospital.

The video of an unnamed hospital was shot by Theodore Firedoor, a campaign on behalf of the Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS) that was set up to encourage people to share images of “dodgy” fire doors.

“Today I’m investigating reports of dodgy fire doors at a major city hospital,” the narrator explains in the video. “The stakes would be especially high in the case of a fire here, so the state of the fire doors is absolutely critical.”

In the video we see a range of doors that have been poorly maintained and installed. The first set of doors inspected reveals a “distinct lack of maintenance.” The doors, which are in constant use, and usually subject to frequent impacts from hospital beds, amongst other things, reveal damage to the meeting edges in particular. Without door edge protection products, the doors have been damaged to the point where you can see straight through the gaps between them. Not very likely to stop a fire then.

Click here to view Figure 1.

Click here to view Figure 2.

The next set of doors is even worse, showing a gap for the intumescent seals between the doors, an adhesive layer for the seals, but no seals. Another set has been repaired using wood filler.

In an environment where many patients are unlikely to be able to evacuate without assistance, fire doors that are not able to contain a blaze for the required 60 minutes are a huge risk.

Of all the institutions you would expect to get details such as this right, it’s a hospital, where saving lives is the core objective. What point is there saving a life if you then put it in danger from fire?

The hospital shown in the film was not identified, but a spokesperson for FDIS told IFSEC Global that the problems were reported to the fire safety manager before the filming took place. The spokesperson continued:

I have chosen this hospital because when I initially reported important (and basic) issues with the fire doors the fire safety manager was quite, dismissive, showed little knowledge about fire doors and failed to take me up on the free of charge help I offered (and then only carried out the most basic of improvements, still leaving the fire doors unfit).

So the fire safety manager was already aware of my concerns before we shot and released the film.

He continued to explain that from his experience he was not the first fire door inspector to have received such a dismissive response from those in charge of public buildings.

Have you seen any similar horror stories, and had your complaints fall on deaf ears?