Greater Manchester Fire and rescue service rounds off National Sprinkler Week with new videos promoting the benefits of sprinklers for local businesses.
Love 2 Sleep is a major supplier of bedding to hotels, NHS and others based in Salford. There was a fire in their factory at 0215 which activated the sprinkler system; this alerted both the fire and rescue service as well as the business owner.
Results of sprinklers
Speaking about the fire in this video, the company representative said: “As a result of having sprinklers, we were up and trading by 0900 that morning. If we hadn’t had them, we would have been shut as a business overnight.”
Station Manager Bob Birtles said: “In the commercial sector, sprinklers control the fire, if not extinguish it before the arrival of the fire service.” Station Manager Paula Lyons added: “The fire is generally smaller, it is more contained, there is less damage. The business can open quicker and get back to their normal business as usual.”
Fire sprinklers
Fire sprinklers fitted at the site activated, quickly putting the fire out and minimizing the damage
In the second video, the manager of a local Biffa waste facility described a fire earlier this year where sprinklers prevented it from spreading throughout the premises. He talked about the impact of a fire and how it can affect their ability to continue trading, employing local people and how they have to have contingency plans in place for alternative premises for waste transfer.
The video shows footage of other major commercial fires in warehouses emphasizing the impact on the local environment and the risk to firefighters. Just days after footage for one of the new films was captured a fire broke out involving Biffa’s waste transfer site in Salford. Fire sprinklers fitted at the site activated, quickly putting the fire out and minimizing the damage caused as a result of the incident.
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Area Manager Fearnhead added: “Thanks to the fire sprinklers in place at the Biffa site, firefighters dealt with the incident in under three hours – which is significantly less time than what tends to be spent dealing with a waste site fire with no sprinklers in place, which in recent years have been known to go on for days, or even weeks.”
Kris Egerton, Operations Supervisor at Biffa, said: “We are grateful that the timely action of the sprinkler system helped stop the spread of the fire that broke out at our site and enabled firefighters to bring it under control quickly. As a result, we were able to minimize damage and resume operations swiftly. The sprinkler system adds an extra layer of protection, reducing the risk of injury and ensuring our people and the public are safe.”
