17/05/2010
Al-Ahram Al-Ektsady Magazine 2010/MAY /17
There are approximately 30 fires per day in Cairo. Facilities are destroyed, lives are lost and money is wasted. The reasons are due to short circuits, cigarette butts and actions of people. Questions were asked: Do we have real industrial safety? Do industrial cities lack standards in safety facilities? Are there problems with taxes and customs with regard to importing fire extinguishers? What are the lessons learned from reoccurring fires? Business owners need to provide training for their workers; fire fighting equipment must be maintained and checked daily with maintenance carried out every 6 months to examine electrical wires.(Available in Arabic – German in PDF)
The Egyptian industry of firefighting equipment isn’t provided with specifications required and the foreign product is produced with different specifications. This causes the price of imported equipment to be higher as they are producing equipment especially for the Egyptian market. The price of equipment isn’t a crisis, but the problem is with maintenance. Fire extinguishers are the basic tool in fighting fires. Factory owners must make this item a priority for fighting fires in factories Dr. Nader Riad said that the absence of specialized training is the main reason for fires especially in factories that have ignored the maintenance process or those that don’t place maintenance as a top priority. He also stressed the need for building codes for facilities, protecting them against fire. Government bodies concerned with the safety of facilities contribute to fire fighting. Tourism facilities are of vital importance, any disaster causes negative results. Any error could remove them from the market, so they require all procedures for safety such as early warning alarms and safety equipment for the security of individuals.