The Discipline of Fire Protection

Fire protection is the practice of minimizing the effects of a fire or other emergency by creating and maintaining barriers to keep people, objects or structures safe. The discipline of fire protection involves a wide range of activities from research and development to application, testing and design. Those who work in the field of fire protection can find employment in many industries including engineering, materials science and construction, firefighting, business and law.

There are two main categories of fire protection: preventive and defensive. Preventive measures prevent or limit the spread of a fire by separating a structure or a group of structures, making escape routes accessible and/or using smoke suppression systems. This type of fire protection can be used in facilities such as wood or electrical workshops, dry cleaners and printers, as well as hospitals, hotels and canteen kitchens.

Buildings may also be insulated to reduce the spread of fire and provide a delay period so that occupants have enough time to escape or escape to a safe location. Fireproof insulation materials can withstand very high temperatures for long periods and have low thermal conductivity to reduce the amount of heat that transfers through a wall or other surface.

Another form of fire protection is the use of fire-resistance rated assemblies to divide building areas and prevent the spread of fire from one area to the next. These assemblies can include walls, stairways and floor assemblies. To maintain their rating, penetrations made by pipes or cables must be sealed with special materials to ensure that they do not compromise the integrity of the assembly. These special sealing materials must be tested to meet standard test methods such as ASTM E814.

Detection of a fire and the ability to escape are critical in any situation. Smoke alarms can help give people time to exit their homes before a fire becomes too large, and can even save lives in places like hospitals or care facilities where evacuating patients must leave through doorways. In the home, install smoke alarms on every level of the house and outside each sleeping room. Test them monthly and replace the batteries when they chirp to warn of low power.

Fire extinguishers can be used to stop small fires in their incipient stages by applying a chemical agent to the fire that blankets the burning material and interrupts the chemical reaction. They can be found in most buildings and should always be kept close at hand, along with the fire alarm.

Those who work in the field of fire safety can find employment as fire engineers (also known as fire protection engineers), firefighters, forensic investigators or fire safety professionals. They can also find work in a wide range of industries including consulting, forensic investigation, government employees at all levels (local, state and federal), fire equipment and system manufacturers, design firms, insurance industry representatives or educational institutions. This diversity in career options is what makes the fire protection engineering field so appealing to those who are passionate about reducing risk.