Episode 60 – Fire Safety Best Practices

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats, and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRS a represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

Thanks for joining us today for another episode of the Linen, Uniform, and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA. I’m your host, Jason Risley. With summer now underway, we’ll focus on a timely topic on today’s episode, fire safety. Joining us to discuss best practices to use in your plant to prevent fires is Don Bach, a certified safety professional and associate in risk management who owns and operates Seabright Safety Solutions. Bach has a wealth of experience in the linen uniform and facility services industry.

He worked for Mission Linen Supply for more than 30 years. At Mission Linen, Bach held increasingly responsible roles in operations before advancing to director of safety and risk management. I’m honored to be presenting to you all on fire safety and prevention, a topic that is near and dear to our hearts. And as fires can be catastrophic and can seriously impact our ability to continue operations. Normally, we concern ourselves with what we call spontaneous combustion when we start to talk about fires, but there are several other risks associated with operations that all have the potential to shut us down for weeks, months, some cases, years, and and in some cases, you know, altogether.

Today, I’m gonna try to point out those different risks, and how we might be able to prevent them. I’m gonna review with you the elements of fire and some some basic simple concepts there. The risks that you are likely to see in a laundry operation, I’ll also provide with you some fire prevention strategies, and then finally, we’ll touch on training, to be able to prevent fires, from occurring in your operations. So I’m sure you’ve all seen this diagram. It identifies the 3 elements required to support combustion, that is fuel or something that will burn.

In our case, mostly, it’s a textile. Oxygen, which without which a fire can’t be supported, and finally, a heat source. The heat source can be an open flame, but often it is it’s just a chemical reaction that’s caused by the presence of oils or greases on a fabric. And you can see that the absence of any one of those three elements, a fire can’t be supported. So again, when we’re talking about, you know, abating a fire, we need to be able to figure out a way to remove 1 or one of the 3 elements to be able to stop the fire.

Gentle laundry fires, I’m sure you’re all familiar with these, but there’s dryer fires, electrical fires, lint fires, solvent fires, acetylene and oxygen in combination, arson, which is a which is a topic that not many people touch on. And then what I’m gonna call high hazard fire and what the way I view high hazard fire is the items that we know, can be subjected to exothermic reaction or spontaneous combustion. And so we’ll look at we’ll look at all of those in terms of prevention. But first, what we need to look at is planning, and by planning, I mean starting out with a site specific emergency action plan. The emergency action plan should be updated at least annually, but, specifically, anytime anything changes within the operation, if you’ve changed personnel, if you’ve changed hospitals or clinics.

The EAP should also spell out how personnel respond to a chemical spill or release. The emergency action plan identifies clearly the responsible parties, the procedure that has to be implemented, as well as the appropriate agencies to be notified in the event of a either a spill or a fire. Use the emergency action plan to conduct training for fire extinguishers, identify the nearest hospitals, clinics, and the egress routes for the, employees should there be, an emergency within the plan. Identify what company takes care of the sprinklers, the fire alarm, the fire extinguishers. Fire prevention should occupy a good percentage of the emergency action plan and point out potential fires and means to prevent and or extinguish.

Also, the emergency action plan should identify where the utility shutoffs are located and how to shut them off. Also, provides you with a listing of the resources that you would use, perhaps, even on a daily basis, like who’s your gas company? Where do you get your water? Who’s the elect electricity? What business do you use to handle your boiler?

Your chemical supply, your security, and finally, your HVAC system. It also should address, you know, other things like natural disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and be able to provide assistance and guidance to employees to experience any of those natural disasters. And finally, it should as I said before, it should have a a good deal of the emergency action plan should be dedicated to a fire prevention plan. But we’ll look first at fire prevention and sprinklers, again, because the sprinkler systems are one of the primary ways of controlling fires once they begin. And as NFPA has noted that the fire sprinkler failures, in during the course of the year are most often caused by personnel issues where fire control valves have been turned off, or heads are have not been operable.

So on a monthly inspection, you wanna make sure that your, sprinklers are are installed from 1 to 12 inches from the overhead or the ceiling, allowing at least an 18 inch area below the sprinkler head, without obstructions that the, when the sprinkler head actuates, it can act it can actually put out the fire. Again, if the sprinkler head is lower than the 12 inches from the ceiling, it’s likely or it’s possible that the heat from any combustion that’s going on down below it will actually go past the sprinkler head and not actuated, collecting near the ceiling. That’s actually an experience that I had at one of the plants when I was a risk manager was, we had a a bag, combust under the sprinklers. Unfortunately, the sprinklers were not, within 12 inches of the ceiling, and so the heat went by the sprinklers. And by the time it had reached a point of, of actually actuating the sprinklers, over 20 slings were involved in the fire.

So it was it was quite a learning process. As a result of that, we realized that we needed to install some sort of heat collecting device just above the sprinkler heads to ensure that they actual that they actuated quickly. There’s 2 types. There’s a fusible link, and there’s a glass bowl. The fusible link actually is, like a solder, that will melt at a certain temperature and allow the sprinkler head to actuate.

The glass bowl, the glass will break, and it will, allow the sprinkler head to operate. In your monthly inspection, you’re looking to be sure that the sprinkler heads haven’t been damaged or that they haven’t been painted. By painting them, you essentially remove their ability to spray water, and so they’re they’re basically inoperable. You also wanna be sure that they haven’t been damaged by forklifts or something like that. So, again, the in sprinklers, in their in the sprinkler heads are very, important to do.

That should be part of your monthly safety inspection, and actually should be something that you view on a, basically, on a daily basis. There’s also control valves, and the control there’s the control valves need to be tested at least quarterly. And by control valves, I mean, those valves that supply the water to your plant, to your sprinkler system. And there’s a couple different there’s a couple different kinds. There’s the post indicator, stem and yoke, and those are the 2 primary, types of control valves that you’ll find in a commercial building.

On the outside of the building, the post indicator valve extends up from the ground cup ground over a water supply main at it has a detachable hand crank that operates the valve, and the target that’s visible through the window connected to the stem reveals the word either open or shut on the side of the valve housing. Note that this does not guarantee the actual condition of the valve as it can be misadjusted, or the or the gate may have separated. What you wanna be sure of is just the hand crank that you have attached to it is secured in place so that no that people can’t come in and change the position of the valve itself, without changing the indicator. The outside stem and yoke is the most common type of indicating valve. The valve operates by raising and lowering a gate that cuts off the water flowing through the casing.

The gate connects to a large brass threaded threaded stem with a circular threaded handle that connects to the yoke. If you’re looking at the picture here on the right, that’s the, stem and yoke system, and you can see that the the stem is completely extended through there, meaning that that valve is totally open. In your monthly inspection when you’re walking through the facility, you want that’s the thing that you want to check, and you want to be sure that it’s secured in the open position. Most of the time, I’ve seen either a steel or a chain. Either way, you what you wanna do is ensure that that stem is fully extended, and and the, valve is locked in the open position.

Again, these are the most these are the 2 most common ones. Probably 95% of the buildings that you all, operate in have 1 or the other of these two types. And, again, this should be included in your monthly inspection and your quarterly inspection. The next thing that I’d like to talk about is the main drain valve, which is a test valve. It’s an on an automatic sprinkler system, it primarily drains water from the system for maintenance.

The main drain is used to conduct a main drain test to to comply with an FPA 25. The purpose of the main drain is to test the fire sprinkler system water supply piping leading into the building. It’s not gonna test the pressure of the water or the adequacy of the supply. It’s just going to test that there is water actually going to it. You should do it, inspection on that on an annual basis.

NFPA says every 3 years, but I I I think that, we had we’re doing it more like a quarterly basis. And when you do that test, you need to, include your alarm company in the process because, essentially, what you’re doing is you’re draining, the sprinkler system, and there’s they should be getting an alarm. So you can do 2 things, notify your alarm company that you’re draining it, 2, check to make sure that they’re getting a signal that your sprinkler system isn’t operational. One of the things that, you know, is in terms of talking about the main drain and and my experience with it is, you know, I was actually at a plant one day where we were testing the main drain. We opened it, drained the sprinkler system, and then returned it to service or closed it up again, thinking that it was returned to service, and the pressure didn’t come back.

And what we found in the process of the researching it, what had happened is that the city had performed some work on, on a waterline, and then the operators of for the city had failed to close a valve, or I’m sorry, open a valve, to allow the water pressure to return. And, again, it I’m not gonna talk about, you know, what kind of pressure you should have there, but you should have pressure on the system that’s that’s, equal to whatever is coming through the city’s water line. What finally, you know, I’m talking about maintenance and maintenance city people. It it also, you have to be aware of your own employees, performing maintenance on your sprinkler system. Another, you know, bad outcome that we witnessed was, one of the plants was the engineer was, doing some, work on the sprinkler system.

Actually, it was an outside system, and he was draining air from it on a Friday and failed to reinstall or reinstate the condition of the sprinkler system and left it, you know, inoperable over a 3 day weekend. And on Sunday of that weekend, we experienced a fire there that took out about a1000000 and a half dollars worth of building. You should also have in in addition to your monthly, quarterly, annual, and, inspections, you should also have a 5 year inspection, where’s where you get a a qualified fire sprinkler company to come in and inspect your system to ensure that everything is operational and the sprinkler heads and everything are as they should be. So now we’ll move on to trying to look at the prevention of the different kinds of fires. First one, we we’ll look at is preventing dryer fires.

Dryer fires are usually caused by overheating products, such as terry used in restaurants or or shop towels and dust mops with residual oils that can combust if it’s too hot. In addition to causing a dryer fire product not properly cooled can combust after being discharged from the dryer and come compacted in slings or carts. This act is actually one of the most common fires in laundry, and usually due to carelessness or trying to hurry. And one of the situations that I’ve found in you know, for 12 years, I, led a facilitated employee cross functional teams, and and one of the the common themes of that was that employees were doing things that they shouldn’t have been doing because they felt the pressure to work fast. And so you you want to be sure that, you know, people that are certainly handling, critical pieces of your operation don’t feel a need to be working faster than it’s safe.

Do you wanna make sure that before the product is discharged from the dryer, it’s gone through a proper cool down. It’s followed the formula. It’s cooled down to a point where it, is not going to combust. You don’t want to ever use your dryers for storage. Again, you wanna make sure that, once the dryer, formula is complete, the product is discharged.

You wanna ensure that you clean your lint filters at least daily, if not more often, depending on the product that you’re drying. Each dryer is outfitted with an internal sprinkler, and that internal sprinkler is easily closed with a globe valve, so you wanna be sure that you’re testing on at least on a monthly basis, that those sprinklers are still operable. And then finally, training operators about what to do in the event of of a tumbler or a dryer fire, is to ensure that if they note that there’s a fire going on in a dryer, that they leave the doors closed and allow the sprinklers to operate properly and put out the fire. One other item of note is that, you know, you want to be sure that if you experience a dryer fire, check the, condition of the burner because I I was in a plant where they, experienced several dryer fires over the course of a month. And what we found, in investigating it was that the burner was starting to decompose, and it was shooting hot pieces of metal into the dryer and igniting, actually, wet product.

As far as electrical fires, this is something that, unless you have a very educated, workforce engineering crew, it’s best it’s, recommended that you get an outside contractor to do the annual inspection, focusing really focusing on the motors and inverters, checking to make sure that they’re not overheating, and that the overheating isn’t caused by damaged wiring or wiring exposed to the elements or any kind of electrical faults. If you all one other thing to be aware of is that oftentimes during the course of operations, you’ll get a, circuit breaker that will trip, and and a production worker will reset it and never tell anybody. And it can happen multiple times in a short period of time, obviously, indicating that there’s a problem, but you’re not aware of it. So that’s one of the things that needs to be addressed on a on a training basis to be sure that if there’s somebody that is, feels the need to reset a, a circuit breaker, that a manager is aware of that back. Preventing lid lint fires and solvent fires, that should be one of the things that’s critical to that is a daily blow down, meaning that you’re taking that you’re blowing down all the lint from the overhead, on top of equipment, especially from on top of machinery and and motors.

And a hot work program is integral to avoiding these kinds of fires. A good hot work program must be followed to ensure that no bad outcomes occur while we’re doing any kind of welding, cutting, brazing, and in some cases, grinding. The key elements of this program are a hot work permit. The permit must be completed before the work is performed by the most senior person involved. Check there should be a checklist, and the first thing on the checklist should be, do we need to actually do this work?

And if we could if we can’t find a workaround and then we’re gonna do the work, then we must make sure that the equipment that is gonna be used is in good repair. Within 35 feet of the we work, all flammable liquids, dust, lint, and oily deposits must be removed, Any explosive atmosphere eliminated. Flores swept clean. Combustible materials wet down or covered with damp sand or fire resistive sheets. Remove all other combustibles where possible, cover all floor and wall openings.

These are the minimum requirements. There also must be a fire watch who’s on scene during and after the work. The fire watch must have a charged fire extinguisher, be trained not only to use extinguisher, but to sound the alarm if needed. The hot work should also be monitored for, at least 4 hours afterwards. And again, there’s probably not a lot of solvents that you’re using in your plants, but if you do have a solvent, that you’re using for, cleaning, make sure that it’s kept away from any kind of heat source or electrical, operation.

Now for a brief message from TRSA. Hey. Hey. My TRSA friends. I hope you have already blocked off your calendars for October 10th through 12th for this year’s 110th TRSA annual conference.

Yes. That’s right. You, me, and a few hundred of our linen uniform and facility services professionals are getting together in Naples, Florida for 3 amazing days. Now sure, you’ll have the opportunity to connect and network with the industry’s biggest and brightest people. And of course, the event will be packed with industry insight and new leadership possibilities that that are tailored and designed to help transform your business.

Oh. Oh. And you you bet. There will be an opportunity to celebrate the year’s award winning achievements and because you’re in Naples, you’ll have the chance to experience the wonderful sun and sand that Naples, Florida has to offer. But here’s something you haven’t had the opportunity to experience since 1913.

Yep. I just got off the phone with Joe Ricci, and he’s put together a fantastic lineup for this year’s event. First of all, NBA legend, Walter Bond, will be kicking things off on October 11th in a session you are not going to want to miss. And, yes, for the first time in a 110 years, I’ll be joining the t r s a annual conference. Yes.

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It is time to start thinking inside the box. I’ll see you there. Now back to the episode. Oxygen is settling fires. Again, make sure that your hot work program is in place, that you followed all of the procedures in terms of housekeeping, covering the wood, providing the fire watch with a fire extinguisher.

Also, using welding curtains, again, to control whatever metals might spray away or you know, be moved by the, welding or whatever you’re doing. That’s something that, again, most of the times when we’re doing hot work, we’re doing it in the shop. And the shops, as you know, are not always the greatest place to be doing that sort of thing. So there may be a a good reason to move that welding if possible to an outdoor area. Most of the shops that I’ve been in, you know, are not exactly as neat and clean as we would like them to be.

So it’s much harder for you to ensure that the artwork program is actually being followed. Again, you wanna make sure that all of the, flammable gases are are discharged from the room and that make sure that each of the, the tools that you have, the flashback arrestors, are actually operating correctly and weld in well validated areas. One thing that we don’t think much about, but NFPA figures show that about 13% of all fires over the course of the year are arson fires, and arson fires, represent, unfortunately, 45% of business fires. And what the the issue is, with arson fires is, really, it’s opportunistic vandalism, and I’m going to share with you that, I also experienced an arson fire, at one of the locations during my career, and it was truly because it it it was a disgruntled employee who was unhappy with the management at at that particular location. And in the course of, his vandalism, fire investigator found that there were at least 6 areas where an accelerant had been used to, start the fire.

Again, you want to make sure that all of your security lighting is operable and replace any lights that are are not working immediately. Keep doors fully closed. And if possible, doors that are not monitored by individuals should be, operated from the inside, allowing egress in the event of an emergency, but but preventing people from entering the building, that are unauthorized. If you can and should have some sort of security cameras operating on the around the perimeter again to keep, to discourage people from trying to, enter the building or to create a problem for you. Keep, all your flammables locked up in flammable cabinets.

Don’t allow refuse to, gather around the facility, and be aware that arson can happen during business hours. So, again, a disgruntled employee can can really make an impact on your on your business. Keep your roof clean, and make sure that the ladders leading to your roof have a barrier over them that can be locked. Again, you don’t want to allow you know, thinking about it. You don’t want to allow a 13 year old to get up on your roof, and create a problem for you.

So those are some simple solutions to reduce the risk of an arson fire. And, again, the arson fire that I that we experienced was over a $2,000,000 fire. So, again, want to stress that arson is a concern. We don’t think about it because we always think of a spontaneous combustion fires as our major fire concern. So now let’s go look again at that fire triangle, and we talked about the 3 elements needed to, to come, to combust or to to support combustion.

Now we’re adding a 4th element, and that is the chemical reaction. And so that is the the reaction that occurs that can initiate a, fire. And so, again, we need to be able to remove one or more of the elements to, prevent fires. And so on this next slide, I’m showing you how that exothermic reaction, works. And that is the term spontaneous combustion, really, to me, is a misnomer.

Textile fires are due to a chemical process known as exothermic reaction. The conditions that create exothermic reactions are are well known in the industry. In soiled linen and suppressants of oils, greases, and animal fats that generate heat when compressed. Volley pulled from a dryer prior to cooling will react and temperature will increase resulting in combustion. The risk in both conditions can be reduced by implementing programs and processes aimed at eliminating those conditions.

The this is actually a true representation of what your what your spontaneous combustion fire looks like, and that is it starts at the core, and and then it works outward. And so you’re not aware of the situation until it’s actually breached the exterior of the sling or cart or wherever the product is being stored. You can take temperature readings of your soil bags early on and and have them tip perfectly normal temperature readings. And then as the day goes on or as the the ambient temperature increases, the exothermic reaction, gets a bit of a head start and gets can can result in spontaneous combustion. Now we’re gonna talk about preventing what we call what I call high hazard fires, and that is your spontaneous combustion fires.

You know, we call we call them spontaneous combustion fires, high hazard because the components are easily identified. It’s a type of soil from coming from restaurants or shops that, from restaurants would be those those, those restaurants that use, you know, a lot of oils and greases. You know, we think of those as the ethnic restaurants, the Greek, and other and, Mexican restaurants where the the the product is soaked with grease as it’s put into the bags, also from, you know, shop towels and those those kinds of items that that again are have been sitting, for a period of time, at the the location. So I’m gonna show, you know, a basic program that’s called the internal program, which is actually progressive. It it can stand alone and work as long as as everyone follows the procedures, and this is the one area of issue with any program that that has a potential for failure if personnel don’t follow procedures.

It can be enhanced by including a device to determine and record temperatures found in clean in soil or clean linens. We used a a Fluke 60 2, which is a cut is a handheld, pretty versatile and accurate in determining temperatures, or external monitoring can be added. The this enhances the process by adding cameras and thermal imaging. The base the basic program still needs to be maintained to be able to, ensure that you’re, you know, reducing the risk of fire. And the final option that I’m going to show you is being used by an operator in Washington state.

It’s it’s actually a DIY system that that acts that works. But what I said is we needed you needed to have a program, an internal program that has these elements to it, where you have a handling program that that talks about how the product is handled at the customer’s location, How it’s handled when it’s picked up, and then received at the plant. And then finally, you know, it comes into the plant, but the plant is in the process of closing down. How do you identify it, isolate it? Do you sort it and wash it, dry it and cool it?

What do you do on weekends? And finally, if all else fails, if you have to have a fire watch. So when we speak of high end, we’re talking about tolling subjected to certain types of oils. These these items should be kept separate from other linen items and stored outs outside the restaurant if possible. You should be you should actually meet with your customer to explain to them that their the product that they’re using, with the process that they’re using does lend the product to to spontaneous combustion fire or exothermic reaction.

And that fire can occur within their building or once you’ve picked it up. But, you know, you want to be sure that they understand that they have to keep it separate and isolated if at all possible. Route personnel should then identify these items when picked up, keep the soil separated from other f and b or hospitality linen, and flag it if at all possible to, you know, to identify it as soil that can that can combust. We used red napkins, which was we used the color red to, to clearly identify what product we were talking about and just and to identify the significance of it. It’s a red napkin tells us that that whatever’s in that bag could spontaneously combust.

Once it’s received at the plant, the, the prevention program has to become active. The high hazard items are placed in a designated in area, either outside away from the structure, or in a container that’s outfitted to control a fire. We we used a sea tank train contain or containers that are outfitted with sprinkler systems and air conditioning to control the temperatures. We also made sure that all of the areas where these these items could be stored back at the plant were outlined in red to be to ensure that everybody understood that that was where product needed to be kept as long as it was back in the plants. And, again, it’s important that the route personnel and the soil sort soil personnel, are aware of the signage in the, locations where the soil is kept.

If you’re able to sort soil before shutting down, you need to be able to process it as well. At the very least, soiled linen should be washed fully and left fully wet in the machine without draining. If able to wash and dry the linen, ensure that it’s completely finished. That means washed, dried, and then assembled into bundles or bags for delivery. And while preparing the product for delivery, personnel should monitor the finished linen for excessive temperatures.

Again, the easiest way to to to tell about the issue and people are just are touching the linen. They’ll know if it’s hot. They can notify you, and you can ensure that it gets cooled down. For weekend measures, every effort should be made to ensure that all high hazard soil is completely processed. That means washed, dried, bagged, or bundled by the end of the work week.

And if unable to process all the soils, weekend personnel must be assigned to monitor temperatures. Again, this can be done with the Fluke 62 or external monitoring from an outside company. If these conditions can’t be met, a fire watch has to be maintained. And, again, this was really simply the simple, internal program that followed can prevent high hazard fires. A checklist should be devised where management can verify the program is in place and it’s working.

It must be completed and signed by the manager who completes the process. Before signing off, a walk through of the facility has to be completed, paying special attention to the areas where soil is kept and looking for exceptions to the program. Soil is not fully you know, parenthetically, soil is not fully sorted, which has been started through the process but not finished. Use a heat sensing gun, the manager can confirm there’s no hot soiled linen. In addition to temperature research readings, the manager should ensure that the alarm is set and operating as they, leave the operation.

All doors are closed and locked, and then sign off on the daily checklist verifying that all of the procedures have been followed. Check I think the checklist should be subjected to audits, meaning, you know, randomly, the manager of the facility, you know, pulls all these checklists to be sure that they’re being done every day to avoid personnel failing to follow the process. Again, any process that you have in place where people have an opportunity to shortcut it is is a is gonna be a problem. That’s why you need to make sure that that this is done on a daily basis and followed specifically. Once we have the basic program in place, it can be enhanced by adding an external monitoring system and program.

There are several organizations capable of monitoring the situation at the plant for a cost. In the past, there was the availability of thermal imaging that could monitor increasing heat, but this was expensive and not as effective as what we now have. Now you can engage an external monitoring organization that can provide not only thermal imaging, but actual real time photos to allow you to see clearly what might be happening in a specific area of the plant. Monitoring company is provided with the alerts that you set and for which the system is monitoring. Once the threshold temperature is reached in any area of the plant, the system will generate an alert.

The alerts will be progressive. Each time the temperature increases by 5 degrees, an additional alert will be sent to all personnel whose mobile devices have been, provided, and it and the system is set up to be monitoring 247 even while you’re operating. But, you want to make sure, especially, that it’s operating, once you’ve closed down. We focused on the soil area of the plant, but we also need to monitor the clean area. You can set the cameras up at the dryers.

They can actually measure the temperature of linen being discharged from the dryer, to ensure that it is actually been cooled down adequately. Cameras can be set up to monitor clean linen in carts or hanging in slings. The the kind of the the one thing about this system is that it is fairly expensive. The the setup for this kind of system is usually somewhere around $300,000. And I told you that I was gonna share with you a DIY system that, was being used up in in, Washington state by a laundry, linen company up there, who we’ve been in great in close contact with over the past couple of years.

He buys sensors, from a company called, YoSmart or YoLink. And what he does is he adds to the sensors a probe, and the probe is is, PVC or what other other kind of vehicle that you can use to get the sensor to record the temperature in the center of a Carter swing. The probes themselves or the sensors cost about a 100 I’m sorry, about $32, and you’ll also need a hub, to which all the sensors will connect. And that hub is only, $35. Software associated with the system downloaded on devices and used to monitor the temperatures of each individual probe.

The way he’s got it set up is that they’ve got their pro their sensors all color coded, and they’ve actually been able to arrange a sprinkler system that they purchased through the Yoast Smart company or YoLink, where the sprinklers are all also color coded. So the probes and sensors that are coded in red have a red sprinkler system over it, yellow, green, etcetera, etcetera. Anyway, the app met, monitors the temperature of each sensor. It came out with automated valves that work. The the series of instead of p PVC pipe water lines, there are 5 sections with 10 sprinkler heads in each and water lines and probes are color coordinated.

Anyway, when temperature reaches the alert temperature set at at this location at 125, and this is all for outdoor storage. I mean, so this is where he’s they they’ve got this set up. When a sensor goes into alert, the, reports the temperature every 10 minutes. The sprinkler system is set to turn on for 9 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, sensor, again reports the temperature.

Even if it’s still above the alert temperature, the valves will turn on for another 9 minutes. So, again, this continues until the temperature has gone below the alert level. And I told you I would touch on training, and training for fire prevention is really, critical. The the emergency action plan should be utilized to train your employees about how to use fire extinguishers, how to recognize a fire, where to go in the event of a fire, and where to assemble, how you’re gonna account for them if there is a fire. For your customer, we talked about a little bit earlier, and that is customers that, use the goods that might that are most likely to react, exothermically, they need to be, advised to that fell for, fact.

You need to talk to them. Let them know that they are as likely to or just as likely to experience a fire in their in their restaurant or location as you are, once you’ve picked up the soil. And so, I mean, I know that I I had been on the receiving line of calls from customers saying that they were gonna sue us because their soda bag, combusted and created some damage. And, you know, the the thing that the thing is is that that customer should know that they are responsible for the condition of the product in its soiled state. It didn’t combust on the shelf.

So, you know, they’re responsible. And they need to know that make sure your your Rotman, the right people know to identify the soil that’s likely to combust by flagging it or tagging it, keeping it separated, putting it in the right place when they get back. Soil department needs to know that they should be, sorting it as soon as it, is received, and try to get it processed through the wash aisle and on the finishing. Finally, management is responsible for ensuring that the entire program is in place and working. If you are a health and safety professional, TRSA recently completed its health and safety summit, which features a wealth of information for safety professionals in the linen, uniform, and facility services industry.

To listen to the presentations, visit TRSA’s On Demand Learning Center at www.trsa.org/ondemand. Thanks again for tuning in. And if you liked what you heard on today’s show, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Itunes, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher. For the latest news and information from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry, subscribe to our newsletter, Textile Services Weekly, and our monthly print publication, Textile Services Magazine. Additionally, don’t forget to follow TRSA on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.