Nursing Center Fire Plan

Listed in: Life Safety

A nursing center's Fire Plan has many components, and all facility staff will be readily familiar with terms like RACE and PASS. To have a complete Fire Plan, staff and leadership in the facility who are charged with conducting fire drills and evaluating the Fire Plan should also be familiar with the specific requirements as they pertain to the Life Safety Code. In the 2012 Edition of NFPA 101, the exact requirements of a health care occupancy Fire Safety Plan are outlined for us in 19.7.2.2. It states:

A written health care occupancy fire safety plan shall provide for all of the following:

1. Use of alarms
2. Transmission of alarms to fire department
3. Emergency phone call to fire department
4. Response to alarms
5. Isolation of fire
6. Evacuation of immediate area
7. Evacuation of smoke compartment
8. Preparation of floors and building for evacuation
9. Extinguishment of fire

These nine requirements do not provide much detail, but they provide a very important framework for how a facility should create, and evaluate, their Fire Plan. The “protect in place” strategy as a response to a fire emergency in a health care occupancy is allowed because of not only our buildings construction and smoke compartment sub-division, but also because of our Fire Plan and training. The facility Fire Plan should be evaluated by the local Fire Marshal’s office annually, and that is a great opportunity for providers to review these important criteria.