Fire Protection for Houston Governmental Buildings

From City Hall in Houston to the Harris County Clerk’s Office, government buildings in Houston provide important civic services to the community. As with any structure, Houston governmental buildings are susceptible to fire. Fire protection and mitigation are vital to keep building occupants and property safe from harm. Implement these tips to help prevent fires in the first place and extinguish a blaze quickly if one breaks out.

Mitigate Fire Risk in Houston Governmental Buildings

The most important step to protect a building from fire is to mitigate as many risks as possible. Follow these tips:

• Manage potential ignition sources: This includes relying on an electrician for wiring installation and repairs, maintaining the heating and cooling system once a year, prohibiting smoking indoors, and storing combustibles away from fixed ignition sources.
• Ensure appropriate building construction: All governmental buildings should feature modern fire retardant materials and building techniques. These include fire doors, floors, walls and ceilings built with two-hour fire-rated construction materials.
• Train employees: All governmental building staff members should take fire mitigation seriously. This includes never lighting a flame indoors and keeping the hallways clear in case evacuation is needed. All employees should also know how to use a fire extinguisher in case this skill is needed to douse a blaze.
• Establish an evacuation route: All public buildings should have evacuation routes posted on the walls. Easy access to these escape routes helps ensure everyone exits the building in an orderly fashion during a fire or other emergency.

Fire Protection for Houston Governmental Buildings

Your efforts to prevent fires and prepare evacuation routes in case a blaze breaks out are vital for safety in governmental buildings. Fire protection is also critical, since these systems work together to extinguish fires quickly, reduce property damage and increase the chance of a successful evacuation.

• Fire sprinklers: Able to provide 24/7 protection against fires, properly installed and maintained sprinkler systems boast quick response times in a fire to help prevent it from spreading throughout the building. Since only one sprinkler head activates at a time, this fire protection system minimizes destruction of property, both in terms of water and fire damage. Fire sprinkler monitoring is an additional service you can use to automatically alert emergency responders if the sprinklers activate.
• Foam fire suppression: In areas of the building where water would do more harm than good, foam suppression systems are an effective alternative. These use Aqueous Film-Forming Foams (AFFF) to smother fires in rooms with sensitive electronic equipment.
• Commercial kitchen fire suppression: Even if your governmental building has nothing more than a small kitchen to provide hot food for employees and patrons, code compliance demands you protect against fire here with a commercial kitchen fire suppression system.
• Fire extinguishers: Ensure you install and maintain fire extinguishers in your Houston governmental building. ABC fire extinguishers are perfect for general use and Class K extinguishers provide added fire protection in the kitchen area.
• Fire alarm: It may not actively put out the blaze, but a fire alarm system is vital for alerting building occupants that an emergency situation requires them to evacuate. Coupled with evacuation routes mounted to the wall and emergency exit signs guiding the way, fire alarms are quite effective at making sure everyone gets out of the building safely.

The best way to protect Houston governmental buildings from fire is to work with Kauffman Co. As a full-service fire protection company, we offer everything from fire protection system installation and inspections to fire sprinkler monitoring. To learn more, or to schedule services, please contact Kauffman Co. online or call us at (713) 893-1090.