How Visual Cues Help In Fire Safety

Visual communication has become a proven and worldwide famous tool for the workplace's safety in fire hazards. The tool helps employees understand all essential safety measures and practice them at the workplace to ensure the vicinity's safety that provides the facility's safety and improves the employees' emergency response at the time of emergency.

Employees should attend safety training in visual communication tools. If the employees are not trained on the visual signals, they won't follow the visual signals in case of any emergency, leading to a disaster. To effectively implement these visual signals at the workplace, the employees must know what they mean and how to use them. The effective use of visual communication will help the organization create better workplace safety and standardization of 5S at all levels.

Examples of Fire Safety

There are different forms of visual communication companies can use for workplace safety. Wall signs are the most important type of visual communication. These signs are primarily used for fire safety and to alert people to use emergency exits. These signs help people identify necessary safety equipment like fire extinguishers and PPE or any other available equipment at the facility. Wall signs are proven useful against fire safety as they are easy to approach, eye-catching due to their contrasting colors, mostly having red text with white background to make anyone alert.

Companies can use floor markings as another tool of visual communication for the fire safety of their facility. Floor markings can include signs like fire extinguishers, electrical panels, and potentially dangerous areas identification using the red floor tape. Floor markings are more useful than wall signs because they can cover more area and give a complete track to follow in an emergency. For floor markings, the use of tape markings is quite useful to chalk out plans for emergency response, particularly the use of glow-in-dark tapes. This type of tape is used to mark emergency exits and set a pathway to follow in a power failure.

Machine and pipe labeling is another type of visual communication that ensures fire safety concerning devices and pipelines. However, it is quite dull but essential to mark all the machines and pipes in a factory or manufacturing unit to prevent potential fire hazards. Every device must carry labels conveying the information on how to use it and what safety equipment to use for operating a particular machine. Especially machines used for welding/cutting must be handled with care using the safety equipment as they can result in fire eruption. Similarly, pipelines carrying potentially dangerous gases and liquids must-have a label on them for compliance with ANSI and OSHA regulations and prevent employees from accessing or opening them without SOPs. It will help employees to report any spilling or leakage to the emergency teams.

Employees and Management can make the workplace safe if they are appropriately trained in using the different forms of visual communication that can help prevent fire hazards.