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Surprising Fire Hazards in the Workplace

5 April 2017 by Dustin Rose

Fire safety should be taken very seriously in the workplace; it only takes one small spark for a fire to start, and fires can then spread very quickly in any office or production area. Property damage can be catastrophic even from a small fire, as can the potential risk of injury. To ensure that your workplace is always safe, note some surprising fire hazards you should eliminate in your office, warehouse, or other such facility.

Stacked wood and cardboard

If your facility uses a lot of pallets and receives quite a number of shipments in card board boxes, you may want to do a quick check of the dumpster area outside the building. Note if those shipping and stacking materials are contained in the rubbish bin, as it's not unusual for workers to stack pallets and folded boxes outside that bin, to save space for other rubbish. This is a sure fire hazard, as it only takes on stray cigarette butt, spark from a motor engine, or other such ember to ignite those materials. This is especially true during summer, when the wood and cardboard dry out and become even more flammable. Provide a separate rubbish bin for cardboard and have old pallets broken down so they can be put in the rubbish without taking up added space, to reduce this fire risk.

Improperly maintained equipment

If you don't properly maintain anything with an engine, a spark from that engine could be a fire hazard in your facility. Engines that are running too hot because they're low on oil, equipment with bare and frayed wires, or worn brake parts that are rubbing against rotors can all be a risk for combustion; in a warehouse where there may be boxes or pallets stacked on shelving nearby, this can result in a fire very easily.

Mixing trash

If you add newspapers and office papers to the same rubbish bin where employees also dump metal shavings, this could easily be a fire hazard. Those metal parts could rub against each other and cause a spark, which could ignite those papers. Oils and other flammable liquids could get overly warm when exposed to sunlight while in a bin, and they too could easily spark and start a fire.

Keep a separate bin for office papers and one for the production area, and store oily rags in a metal barrel or drum. Do the same for metal shavings and metals parts that you dispose of so that you have as much sorting of the trash as possible, and can reduce this fire risk.

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