The SWITCH Forum recently hosted an online seminar kindly supported by Helios Fire Systems. Fire can have devastating consequences at any site. There is the danger to human life, the loss of plant and equipment, impact on environment with pollution to land, water and air and then the ongoing problems of increased insurance costs, the expense of getting up and running again, loss of revenues while site is shut, loss of good will from neighbouring sites and in the worst-case scenario the business cannot continue as a going concern.
Fires have been increasing in the sector year on year with the ESA estimating 334 fires reported in 2016/17 and 670 fires estimated in 2019/ 2020. These are known fires and reported fires but the underlying near misses, small scale instances of overheating and fire probably go unreported.
The resource and waste sector faces several challenges when considering fire and fire suppression. By its nature, the sector uses a lot of heavy plant and equipment, faces challenges from the materials they handle (small waste electrical and electronic equipment, batteries, mixed refuse which could contain hot ashes, shredded materials, gas cylinders and many more mixes and combinations of non-processed and processed streams.)
Oxygen, heat, and fuel are frequently referred to as the “fire triangle. You need these three things to allow fire to happen. The fuel for the fire is flowing through the site or stored at any one time. Oxygen is always present. The question is where the heat will come from and act as the ignition for the fire.
Once again, the resource and waste sector have a multitude of options for where a source of heat may come from – self heating in piles of materials, electrical faults, hot works, moving plant and hot spots from friction as well as ignition from items such as aerosols, gas cylinders, batteries and other combustible materials.
The first learning must be that staff at any site must be aware of the constant danger of fire and aware of what the sources of fire can be. There should be regular site reviews and consideration given to potential sources of fire, regular training and awareness talks and a plan for regular maintenance program and checking of site electrical wiring and equipment as well as checking stored materials and conveyor belts. Being alert to the dangers and being prepared.
It can take less than 30 seconds for a small fire to take hold and turn into a major fire. Speed of identification and decisive action is therefore paramount. Time is of the essence.
The Helios Fire systems offer state-of-the-art solutions to protect business and the local surrounding environment. They utilise this advanced technology to be the intelligent and ever vigilant system monitoring your site 24 hours and 7 days a week.
The site is surveyed, and design agreed to ensure there is 100% coverage where possible. The ATFS system is an advanced specialist thermographic camera and automatic targeted cannon system which can protect the entire site, utilising infrared and other imaging systems to identify thermal and visual signs of fire. The system learns background temperatures and form a base line “ambient” temperature profile. The system will then scan the entire site constantly looking for any variation from this norm. It is accurate enough to identify these changes in relatively small volumes of materials at quite large distances.
Once a heat variance is identified the system is triggered a warning issued and a location logged. The system can then act. It is clever enough to then engage the second piece of vital equipment which is a targeted water cannon which sprays pressurised fire suppressant. It automatically calculates the distance, the scale and location of the fire and also makes the decision of what type of action to take (delivery of a targeted jet or supressing “blanket” of water and suppressant.) The system takes the action and removes the potential for human error. The system is also utilising AI and deep machine learning to record background temperatures, early warnings, full activations and any other helpful data. It both learns from the day to day as well as logging and learning from actual fire events.
Taking into consideration the speed at which fire can take hold, the complexity of many resource and waste sector sites and the need to be vigilant to fire and fire hazards all the time, it is reassuring to know that there are options to utilise accurate, reliable and intelligent technologies to be a vigilant guardian of your site, staff and equipment as well as technology which will take fast and decisive action to prevent fire. It is also interesting to consider that this technology is centrally logging all the data from its various clients and events the systems record to keep learning about the sources of fire and fires on resource and waste centre sites. There is of course a cost, but operators will need to measure this cost against the potential costs of a fire taking hold at their premises and the impact it has on their staff, their neighbours and their day-to-day operations.
The SWITCH Forum would like to thank Euan Munro, SLR consulting (an active member of our H&S working group) for raising our attention to the technology and Garry Adey of Helios Fire Systems for providing a very interesting and engaging presentation and webinar. A recording of the webinar can be found at https://switchforum.org.uk/webinars/
A key objective of SWITCH is to signpost existing guidance and information and also to develop resources where a gap is identified. We do not recommend any company or equipment and it is down to site operators and employees to be aware of the very real risk of fire and the need to decisive action.