It is easy to visualise cooking within a commercial kitchen to be the workplace but cooking on a much larger scale takes place in the food manufacturing industry. There are many examples of large-scale cooking equipment – the image below is an example of one. The sheer size of the equipment increases the potential of damage from fire. Heating & Lighting Heating (by definition) and lighting can both generate sufficient heat to provide sources of ignition. Fire damage can be caused by a defective lighting unit, this has happened in a past situation where a light fixture was a 'food-safe' sealed unit which fitted into a ceiling recess. Due to unseen damage the unit became overheated enough to ignite the core material of the ceiling panel. The panel was constructed of two metal skins the in-between of which was sandwiched with expanded foam. The composition of the foam allowed combustion with no evidence of flame and the fire continued to grow within the panel, it was an unknown period of time before the fire was discovered but when detected the fire had spread several metres from the centre of the point of ignition, to prevent further spread the panel was flooded with water to remove the heat and the panel cut away to create a firebreak. Quite often in offices, electric fan heaters are used to provide additional localised heating to employees and because of the familiarity with these small heaters the potential to be a cause of a source of ignition is not considered. Investigation of several office fires has shown that such heaters have been left unattended or left switched on overnight and have sufficiently heated combustible materials, typically paper, to the point of ignition and subsequent fire.
Some of the main causes of fire with regards heating and lighting are: • Placing portable heaters too close to combustible materials.
• Covering the air vents on top of heaters, particularly with combustible materials. • Combustible materials placed too near electric lights, for example, in a warehouse.
• Electric 'task lighting' placed too near combustible materials, particularly where the lighting is high wattage. An example of a fire caused by this source of ignition would be the UK Windsor Castle fire in November 1992, when a curtain came into constant contact with a temporarily installed halogen light. • Fixed appliances sited too near to combustibles. • Non-intrinsically safe lighting used in flammable atmosphere.
Smoking It is not the purpose of this section to comment upon the health aspects of smoking, but the danger of injury or fatalities from smoking materials as a source of ignition. As well as the cigarette itself, lighters, matches and an ashtray if left smouldering all can be the source. Fires started by smoking materials are the greatest percentage of all domestic fires. US National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) figures showed: • During 2012-2016 an estimated annual average of 18,100 (5%) reported home fires started by smoking
materials killed an average of 590 (23%) people annually. • One in 20 home fires were started by smoking materials.
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