What do we pay attention to first of all in a restaurant?
The interior, the cleanliness of the tablecloths, the appearance of the service staff create the first impression.
The quality of the food, the level of service, the restaurant's compliance with our expectations form the main impression.
The audience in the restaurant hall, the music, the lighting and other entourage complement the image and bring final clarity to our perception of the establishment as a whole.
What do we never pay attention to?
Safety.
And not from terrorists, bandits or skinheads, although this is important.
From a dangerous element — fire.
Unfortunately, recently, there has been an increase in fire hazards in clubs, restaurants, cafes.
You don't have to go far for an example: remember the fire in McDonald's on Pushkinskaya Square on 19.05.09 or the sad example in the «Lame Horse» club in Perm.
According to statistics, 80% of fires in restaurants occur due to the heating equipment of the restaurant kitchen and the human factor, without which no statistics can do.
Two eternally Russian questions are brewing: what to do and what to do?
In order to answer these questions, let's start to understand, first of all, the regulatory framework in the field of fire safety.
On May 1, 2009, Federal Law No. 123 TECHNICAL REGULATIONS ON FIRE SAFETY REQUIREMENTS came into force, which should have affected the current situation.
Let's turn to Article No. 5 of this law, which defines the most important component of the problem — ensuring fire safety of protected objects.
Article 5. Ensuring fire safety of protected objects
1. Each protected object must have a fire safety system.
2. The purpose of creating a fire safety system for a protected object is to prevent fire, ensure the safety of people and protect property in the event of a fire.
3. The fire safety system of the protected facility includes a fire prevention system, a fire protection system, and a set of organizational and technical measures to ensure fire safety.
4. The fire safety system of the protected facility must necessarily contain a set of measures that exclude the possibility of exceeding the permissible fire risk values established by this Federal Law and are aimed at preventing the danger of causing harm to third parties as a result of a fire.
As we see from paragraph 2 of Article 5, the purpose of ensuring fire safety of the protected object is:
— preventing fire;
— ensuring the safety of people;
— protecting property in case of fire.
Three main components that are impossible to disagree with and difficult to dispute. Compliance with these requirements entails a number of fire safety measures that are ignored, and in some cases, deliberately not carried out by the owners of those very clubs, cafes, restaurants.
This includes fire alarms, notifications, fire extinguishing, emergency exits, evacuation plans, primary fire extinguishing equipment… the list can go on and on.
Most property owners worry about fire safety last of all, and in order to save money, they begin looking for so-called «loopholes» in the law.
Federal Law No. 123 contains the concept of «Protection Object».
What objects are subject to protection and what means are defined in the Code of Rules SP 5.13130.2009 «Fire Protection Systems.
AUTOMATIC FIRE ALARM AND FIRE EXTINGUISHING SYSTEMS.
Standards and rules for designing» (Appendix A (mandatory).
«List of buildings, structures, premises and equipment subject to protection by automatic fire extinguishing systems and automatic fire alarms»).
The only item from Appendix A that can include clubs, restaurants, cafes is «Public purpose buildings» or «Administrative and household purposes».
And if the area of the building does not exceed 800 m2 or 1200 m2 respectively, then the buildings are equipped only with an automatic fire alarm, which, unfortunately, does not prevent a fire, does not fully ensure the safety of people and property, but only notifies us that a fire has occurred.
Also, our regulatory documents do not regulate the protection of one of the main sources of fire — the hot shop of the restaurant kitchen, ventilation hoods and air ducts.
Everyone knows that every kitchen has a sink, and therefore these rooms can be classified as wet process rooms.
According to the above Appendix A, such rooms are not subject to protection by fire extinguishing systems.
But in reality, the following happens: fat, oil, and soot accumulate in air ducts and ventilation hoods for months.
A single spark is enough to ignite this mixture, and it is quite difficult to extinguish such a fire.
The fire instantly spreads along the entire length of the air duct. But many clubs and restaurants are located on the ground floors of residential buildings, and accordingly the air ducts are located along the facade of the house.
With this solution, without installing fire extinguishing heating equipment and air ducts, the owner of the establishment endangers not only his clients and staff, but also the residents of such houses.
Look at the interior and engineering equipment of an ordinary restaurant.
There is expensive furniture, modern bar and kitchen equipment, high-quality decoration of the halls.
Almost every restaurant has a video surveillance system, an access control system and a security alarm, on which the owner spares no expense.
He protected himself in case of robbery of the establishment, theft of employees and hooliganism of clients. And on the most important thing — protection from fires, which can lead to huge material damage and human casualties, we, as always, saved.
If the restaurant area is not subject to being equipped with an automatic fire extinguishing system (according to Appendix «A» of SP 5.13130.2009), then the installation of a fire alarm and primary fire extinguishing equipment cannot fully ensure the fire safety of the restaurant.
Well, summing up the review of the regulatory framework, we can say that if the restaurant area is not subject to being equipped with an automatic fire extinguishing system (according to Appendix «A» of SP 5.13130.2009), then the installation of a fire alarm and primary fire extinguishing equipment cannot fully ensure the fire safety of the restaurant.
The owner has fulfilled all the requirements that our regulatory framework regulates, but in real life, fires continue, which, unfortunately, in most cases lead to human casualties.
Fire statistics, material and image damage caused to the restaurant, interpret for us the use of fire extinguishing systems, even if our standards do not provide for it.
Restaurant companies that have equipped their restaurants with modern security systems, including fire extinguishing systems, can be counted on the fingers of one hand in Russia.
Most of these companies with foreign capital, but Russian organizations are also starting to wake up, because they understand that only a combination of such security systems as automatic fire alarms, a fire warning system, a video surveillance system, an access control system in combination with a local fire extinguishing system for kitchen equipment and air ducts can provide a full guarantee of the safety of the restaurant business.