Almost every piece of health and safety legislation and every best practice protocol suggested by an expert consultant has an inciting incident that makes it necessary.
It has led to the rather unfortunately accurate maxim that safety rules are “written in blood”, and whilst it is not always the case that it takes a tragic accident for safety to be taken seriously, there have certainly been historic instances where it reached that point.
There is a perceived perverse incentive for businesses to push the limits of safe working practices as much as they legally can do so, and the result is far too often catastrophic.
One of the most illustrative examples of the story of how one errant spark caused Manchester’s worst fire since the Second World War and one of the worst fires in British History.
A Single Spark And A Contempt For Life
The rounded corner building on the edge of Piccadilly Gardens, currently occupied by several restaurants and a Morrison’s, used to be a flagship Woolworths department store.
However, the legacy of the Piccadilly Gardens Woolworths is not the pick ‘n’ mix, nor the teary-eyed nostalgia of generations of people who grew up with the red and white shops, but one avoidable tragedy that led to scores of changes in health and safety legislation and protocol.
On 8th May 1979, Woolworths opened as it often did, but a single spark and a confluence of bad decisions caused the deaths of ten people and 47 injuries.
The spark came from a faulty electrical system. A damaged electrical cable caused a spark that set alight a piece of furniture made from polyurethane foam.
Whilst commonly used at the time to make cheap furniture, it was not only highly flammable but almost immediately dangerous due to the billowing black toxic smoke that emanated from the smouldering seats.
The first problem was the materials used to make the furniture, the next was how close together each piece of furniture was, which caused the fire to spread quickly and become uncontrollable exceptionally quickly.
The black smoke caused many of the injuries and contributed to several deaths, as people on the second-floor restaurant could not find their way to many of the exits.
In a modern retail building, the mains power would be turned off and a sprinkler system would have been turned on to quickly smother the flames, but since there were no sprinklers, there was effectively no way to fight the fire before it got out of hand,
Finally, and most shockingly, the emergency exits had been barricaded. Some were blocked by furniture that was now on fire, the upper windows had thick bars and the emergency exits with their panic exit pushbars had been chained and locked together from the outside to stop them from opening.
Others required a key in a glass box, requiring extra time to extricate at a point where every second counts.
Once the fire had been controlled and the human cost had been counted, it did lead to changes in legislation, most notably the Furniture and Furnishings Regulations 1988.
It also led local security companies to create redesigns to the security doors to prevent them from being locked together, ensuring that such an incident could never be repeated.
If you’d like to build your health and safety knowledge further, our NEBOSH General Certificate course is a great place to start. It’s designed for anyone looking to develop practical skills and gain a respected qualification in workplace safety. To find out more, get in touch with the ACT team today.
