What is a fire extinguisher?
A fire extinguisher is a portable device for tackling a small fire in its early stages. Types are matched to classes of fire, and using the wrong type can make a fire considerably worse.
They are provided for a fire that is still small and for someone who has a clear escape route behind them. The instruction that matters most is the one about when not to use one, and it is the one least often given.
Classes of fire describe what is burning — solids, liquids, gases, metals, cooking oils — and electrical risk is handled separately. Water on a live electrical fire or on burning cooking oil are the two classic and serious errors.
Siting follows the risk and the escape route, so that someone picks one up on the way out rather than going deeper into a building to find it.
In practice
An extinguisher with a current service label and no pin.
The annual service was done properly. Somebody has since pulled the pin out and put it back on the bracket.
The failures that matter are the ones between services — moved, obstructed, discharged, tampered with — and they are found by looking rather than by servicing.
A premises whose only record is the engineer's certificate has evidence of one day a year.
What goes wrong in practice
- Moved from their signed locations and never returned, so nobody can find one under pressure.
- Used as door wedges, which removes them from their point and props a fire door at the same time.
- Staff never trained on which type to use or when not to intervene at all.