When I was advised I’d be attending a Fire Marshall course, I immediately thought of Keith Lard, the anally attentive jobsworth fire prevention officer character created by Peter Kay who was featured in “Phoenix Nights” and its predecessor, “That Peter Kay thing”. When it was aired, there was also an apology to a Mr. Keith Laird, a fire prevention officer who bore an uncanny resemblence to the spoof Keith Lard character and even hailed from Peter Kay’s home town of Bolton. This seems an unlikely coincidence but Peter Kay has always said that it was exactly that.
My Fire Marshall course was much more pragmatic than one that Keith lard would have presented and it was focussed much more on prevention rather than fire fighting. The duties of a Fire Marshall are low impact in day to day working, being aware of exits being kept clear, extinguishers being in-situ & intact etc. When it come to actual fire alarms, the duty is to make sure everyone is out and that you have thoroughly checked the area for anyone left behind.
There was a session on the use of fire extinguishers but the message here was “if in doubt, dont.” There are five main types of extinguisher and they are only really practical for the very early stages of small fires. Use of the wrong type of extinguisher can make a fire worse or put you in danger.
Back in real life, I can only recall tackling two real fires. The first one was when I was about 11 and I had left a chip pan on then got distracted. I came into the kitchen to find three foot flames leaping out of the pan. I knew that the last thing I should do was pour water on it and I thought of something to cover the pan. (I don’t think it had a lid and it was filled with lard which used to harden and hold the basket in place when not in use). In my panic, the only thing I could think of was a large hardback book on Japan that my Auntie from Australia had given me and so I dashed up three half flights of stairs in our split level house to grab the book. Returning downstairs, I gingerly slid the book on top of the pan then realised it would have helped if I’d turned the gas off before I dashed upstairs, rather than now. This put it out and there was no harm done other than a sooty kitchen ceiling and a scorch mark on the back of the book.
The second incident was more than twenty years later and I was living with my parents at the time, prior to a move up to the Nottingham area. They ran a large Off-License in Ealing and had the flat upstairs. (There were further rented flats on the floor above with a seperate entrance). There was an annexe towards the rear consisting of stock rooms and my room was above. I had a good view of the adjacent Pub Beer garden so I could see if anyone I knew was in…
I had gone to bed early for some reason and was awoken by my Mum telling me that we had a fire. I grabbed a dressing gown and as I went dazedly into the kitchen my dad handed me a fire extinguisher and said it was in their bedroom, probably the fan heater. They hurredly exited down the stairs from the kitchen into the shop to dial 999 and I went into the long upstairs corridor of the flat. The bedroom door was closed and it was a substantial one but thick black smoke was already filling the upper levels of the hallway. I scampered to the door and gingerly placed the back of my hand on it. It wasn’t hot but the thick black smoke was already seeping under the door and round the seams. I put my hand on the doorknob and hesitated. Should I risk opening it? I didn’t know what I would find but it was probably full of smoke by now and opening the door might just provide more oxygen to make the fire get worse. Also the smell was acrid and I would be more likely to get myself into trouble trying to tackle it than waiting for the Brigade who were only a short distance away on ealing Broadway. I looked down at the extinguisher and realised it was a water one, not a good idea if it was an electrical fire.
Instead, I took a decision. I would go downstairs into the cellar and turn off the electricity. I did that and joined my parents outside. Looking up at the bedroom windows, the smoke was pouring out around the edges of the frames and the windows were black, so much so that they looked like they had been painted out.
After a couple of minutes the Brigade turned up and we directed them to the stairs. They went upstairs with their breathing gear, bright torches and hoses. After wthey had sorted it out and they had opened the windows to ventilate the room, they allowed us back in to survey the damage. The damage was surprisingly small- a sort of gooey mess on a burnt 12″ circle of rug. It seemed that the fan heater had either malfunctioned or fallen over and set itself alight, along with the rug it stood on. I don’t even recall that the carpet was scorched but of course all of the soft furnishings in the room were ruined by smoke damage. The rest of the flat was also rather sooty and we had to pay for a specialist clean-up company to come in and clean everything that had been exposed to the smoke as best as they could. (All of the wall surfaces needed repainting as well).
As the brigade departed, they gave us a leaflet called “what to do after a fire”. You hear stories of firemen causing more damage than the fire did in order to contain the spread but in our case they didn’t have to do very much at all, it being a very trivial incident in the scheme of things.
That night, my Mum and Dad slept in my room whilst I stayed with a kindly neighbour. I drifted off to sleep thinking what a wimp I’d been in not tackling what was such a small fire. Last week, it occurred to me that I’d made the right decision.
