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Maybe offtopic, but what can you do when you see something very dangerous? I mean f.ex. Mike would see the situation as a possible fire cause. Do you go to the owner or you go to some inspector?
All I know, here the network is terrible, no change since 20 years.

Gloria, I don't think that's off topic. It's a natural progression of the topic.

Everything I do is, or can be, inspected. If I think something is dangerous, and the owner won't deal with it, I can phone the inspector to give him a "heads up". The inspectors are free to find other problems while they are in the building, even if it has passed a previous inspection.

[This message has been edited by twh (edited 08-11-2004).]

Okay, Thank you.
G

I have heard that in the USA the cause of housefires mostly are electric problems.


[This message has been edited by Gloria (edited 08-12-2004).]

Gloria-

No offense to my comrades in the fire service, but "electrical in origin" was once touted as an easy catch-all cause & origin determination for lazy fire investigators... I don't think that the real stats (properly investigated) would hold them up as high.

As far as what to do if you see a dangerous condition? Notify the H.O. in writing of a condition that needs attention. If he ignores it, it'll land on him instead of you should he try to pin it on you if the S hits the F.

A call to the AHJ is always an option, but usually the H.O. can figure out who did it, which could result in him bad-rapping you to his friends... despite the fact that you might have saved his house, or his life.

Hi there Doug!,
And as a front-line Fire Officer, I would tend to agree with your comments, I've had arguments with the Fire Safety (Fire Investigation) Department of the NZFS here until I'm blue in the face, about certain fires, but, no, they don't dig any deeper than scratch the surface these days.
And the nasty thing about it, they aren't overworked either, they are the people that couldn't make it in the Operational side of the job so they get a Station-Officer rank with 3 years experience and tell me how fires start!.

I'm sure some investigations work on that principle. They can't find the proverbial smoking gun (or burnt match in the bed perhaps would be a better term!) so the cause must be electrical, right?

In England, the answer is "Not much."

You can tell the home-owner, and that's about it. There are no electrical inspectors to report anything to. Power companies have a clause to the effect that they reserve the right to disconnect service to premises where the wiring constitutes imminent danger, but that would be extremely rare. These days most of them take the attitude that if it's on the owner's side of the meter, they don't care anyway.

Ultimately local councils have the power to condemn a building as unfit for human habitation, but such actions are also very unusual and are generally only ever implemented due to imminent structural collapse or something like a place being absolutely infested with rats.

I suppose someone might be able to convince the local council that a place be declared unfit for habitation due to extremely dangerous wiring, but I've never heard of such a case.

Councils ("City Hall") here have never had any interest in wiring whatsoever, although that's set to change next January (see the "part P" threads in the non-U.S. area).

Paul, see, that is what the situation is here. Still not an electrician, but I live on the 7th floor of a concrete 10 storey house and I'm extremely afraid of the smallest fire in the house.
Once I have seen the fire car at the house at 2am and I packed my bags and went down the stairs, cause I know when a big fire starts, I can only go up, and that is the roof and no other way down then but to jump. See? It may be only my nightmare fantasy, but I really don't know, what would I do in a fire.
The stairs are in the middle section of the house, so if a fire will break up, that is the first that would be filled with smoke.


[This message has been edited by Gloria (edited 08-15-2004).]

Well, as a fire officer myself, i would have to say that in a situtation such as your's all the doors leading into the stair well should be fire rated with automatic closeing devices. That hall way has to have a rating of sometime if it is a means of escape! should should also have emergency lighting to light your way out. if all the doors are closed in the stairwell it should take quite awhile for the somke to fill it. it may also have a emergency fan in the top of the stair well to extract the smoke if there is a alrm activation.