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Fire safety in marquees
When starting a marquee hire business it’s worth having a chat with your local fire safety officer. In my experience they are very nice people and easy to talk to.
Why talk to them? Well it’s always better to be prepared and to know what is expected of you.
My personal recommendation is to have a suitable exit within 6m of every person in one of your marquees. A suitable exit being a zipped panel or a completely clear (ie wall removed) section. This is very easy with our interchangeable wall system, less so with some other systems.
Note:
- For a 6x14m marquee or longer it is not sufficient to just have zipped entrances at either end, you would need a zipped entrance along one of the long sides
- For marquees that use it dutch lacing is not classed as a suitable exit (unless it is permanently open)
- In discussions with the fire officer talk about whether the exits need signs of any kind. Again in my experience any exit that is not immediately obvious needs a sign.
- We didn’t supply fire extinguishers for catering areas, believing those who used/supplied the catering equipment should do so. A lot of marquee hire companies do supply fire extinguishers for this purpose so again one to think about.
Like many things fire safety is easy and almost common sense but it is always something to consider and speaking to the fire safety officer will give peace of mind as much as anything.
Thanks for reading.
Spencer
