Business fire safety & prevention

Determine your Bushfire Risk

Undertake a Risk Assessment and determine the risk of bushfire to your operations. Consider the interactions of your locality, business, people and partners with the threat of bushfire.

Your locality

• Clarify the level of bushfire risk of the location/s you, your personnel and/or volunteers are operating in. Refer to:
  • What to do when a bushfire happens
  • Bushfire Safer Places in South Australia

Your business

• Do you consider your organisation's activities to be an essential or critical service? Can you change how, when and where you operate to reduce the risk of bushfire on your operations, personnel, volunteers and/or clients? Establish your priorities and determine what could be sacrificed in dangerous fire conditions or in a bushfire.
• Consider the potential impact of a significant incident on your organisation's viability. What is critical to continuing your business? Do you have adequate insurance? What are your legal obligations? Incorporate potential bushfire impacts in your business continuity management processes. Remember that your business continuity may not only be threatened by a direct crisis, it could be as a secondary effect such as school and childcare closures in dangerous fire conditions.

Your people

• Consider whether your staff or organisation has a role in emergency response, relief and/or recovery. If so, ensure that your plan includes the necessary resourcing and staffing to carry out these essential duties.
• Changes in health, resources, living situations, or support systems can make someone more vulnerable during times of emergency. Consider whether any of your staff might need extra support and factor this into your planning. Read about People at Increased Risk in Emergencies Framework for South Australia (PDF).
• Consider whether your personnel, volunteers and/or clients have personal responsibilities under their own Bushfire Survival Plan in the event of predicted high fire danger or an emergency event.
• Consider whether your personnel or clients are emergency services volunteers (e.g. CFS, SES, Red Cross), whose volunteer services may be required in the event of an incident.

Your partners

• Determine the potential impact of your policies and procedures on clients, other businesses and contractors. Engage with your community and communicate changes in policies and procedures. Ensure that procedures are in place to communicate changes to normal operations at short notice or in emergencies.
• Check what policies or procedures are already in place when operating on sites that other organisations or agencies manage. Adjust your procedures to include these if necessary.

Prepare your people

Your Bushfire Survival Plan needs to consider how you, your staff, your volunteers and your clients will act before, during and after a fire weather warning or bushfire event. Preparing your people emotionally to cope with the threat of bushfire is as important as the practical training in bushfire safety procedures and the physical preparations of your worksites, machinery and equipment.

Although every individual will cope differently with a frightening event, there are strategies that can be used to better prepare so that people can resist the natural reaction to panic. Practising the actions in your Bushfire Safety Plan will prepare you and your people to be able to respond automatically and appropriately to a fire weather warning and during a bushfire threat.

Communication

• Engage with your staff and communicate bushfire risks and bushfire safety policies and procedures.
• Engage with your clients, business partners and contractors and communicate bushfire safety policies and procedures.
• Ensure that procedures are in place to communicate changes to normal operations at short notice or in emergencies.

Training

• Train your staff in bushfire safety procedures. Practise your plan and ensure that individuals are familiar with bushfire survival actions
• Incorporate bushfire safety policy and procedures into your induction processes for new personnel
• Refresh staff skills and knowledge each year prior to the Fire Danger Season.

Capability

• Consider the physical and emotional capabilities of yourself, your personnel, volunteers and clients to cope and respond to bushfire. If you plan to continue operating in dangerous fire conditions, or you plan to actively stay and defend your facilities, are you and your people physically fit? Refer to Preparing yourself for a bushfire.

Equipment

• Ensure that all staff have access to personal protective clothing and equipment when working in areas subject to bushfire risk. Refer to Emergency Kits.

Prepare your plan

A written plan details what you need to help safeguard your people and your assets if a fire threatens. It clarifies what actions each member of your team will take and how you will monitor and communicate fire risk and emergency warnings. Remember, if it's not written down, it's not a plan. Making a choice when a bushfire threatens is too late. The majority of people in bushfires die fleeing their locations at the last moment. They place themselves at greater risk of suffering smoke inhalation and being burnt by radiant heat. Lack of preparation and leaving late is a deadly combination.

Practising the actions in your Bushfire Survival Plan will prepare you to respond automatically and appropriately during a bushfire threat.

• Document and practise your plans and procedures.
• Have a plan that will work in different situations and can adapt to changing circumstances. It is important to recognise that unexpected things are likely to occur in an emergency event.
• Review policies, plans and procedures annually to reflect any changes that may have taken place. Keep links to CFS websites live to ensure that material is up-to-date.