Health watchdog criticises fire safety in Westmeath disability centre

Some residents in a disability centre in Co Westmeath were told to close their bedroom door and await the arrival of fire fighters in the event of a blaze breaking out, the health and safety watchdog has found.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) conducted an unannounced inspection of Praxis Care Mullingar on February 1st and “was not assured that in some instances residents could be safely evacuated in the event of a fire”.

Inspectors said the personal emergency evacuation plans outlined two situations – A and B – for residents who slept upstairs.

In situation B, it said if the residents’ exit was blocked on the stairs or if they refused to evacuate, the resident should be informed to “shut their bedroom door and remain there until the fire brigade came”.

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The inspectors said both of the bedrooms had Velux windows and that one had been risk-assessed as being suitable to use for rescue purposes.

“However, the person in charge could not verify if both windows were in line with fire regulations and if the second window could be used for rescue purposes in the event of a fire,” the inspection report said.

Furthermore, Hiqa inspectors said the fire evacuation plan did not provide adequate guidance on the evacuation of residents in line with the provider’s own fire evacuation strategy.

The fire drill records indicated that the type of evacuation was a “get out and stay out”, however, the evacuation plan stated that if a staff member was upstairs, they could direct residents to stay in their bedrooms.

This was contradictory to the provider’s own evacuation strategy for this centre, Hiqa said.

“In addition, given the mobility needs of some of the residents, the fire evacuation plan did not adequately guide staff on duty as to which staff member was responsible for evacuating which individual residents.”

Following the inspection, the provider agreed to make a number of improvements in terms of fire safety, including the installation of carbon dioxide monitors and commissioning a fire engineer to review all aspects of fire escape.

The inspection report on the Mullingar centre was one of 21 that were published on Tuesday.

Non-compliance with fire safety and precautions was raised in a number of centres, including the Community Living Area 18, run by the Muiríosa Foundation, in Laois.

Inspectors said that while many areas of fire safety were maintained to a good standard, the arrangements in place to evacuate residents in a timely manner at night “required improvement”.

“As a result of this concern, an urgent action was issued to the provider and subsequent to the inspection, the provider submitted their response which gave adequate assurances that this issue had been addressed,” the report states.

A fire procedure was in place for the facility, but the inspectors identified some issues with the plan.

For instance, the fire procedure didn’t clearly guide on the arrangements for the evacuation of staff residing in upstairs accommodation, should the downstairs fire exits become inaccessible to them at night, in the event of a fire.