It’s an appalling situation. We know why it happens, we have the technology to stop it from happening and we’re even obliged by law to take preventative measures, yet fires starting in tumble dryers continue to plague laundries in both the commercial and on-premises sectors, and launderettes.
Richard Neale, who writes about this worrying problem on page five, says: “As an industry we still burn down two laundries a year and an on-premise laundry is a high risk area for a larger establishment.” As recently as last September, LCN carried a news story about a laundry that was gutted by fire. At the time the cause was not known, but suspicions predictably were that it was spontaneous combustion in a dryer.
That same issue also reported on the fire suppression system for dryers which American Dryer Corporation had developed in conjunction with Milnor. As Richard Neale points out, an automatic water vapour quench system is now available in the UK through JLA.
As if on cue, JLA’s latest mailer floats onto my desk. It tells of two tumble dryer fires at neighbouring nursing homes. The first at Mary Chapman Court in Norwich was disastrous, blowing out the glass in the dryer’s door and wrecking the laundry. Deputy manager Garry Nightingale said: “It was a nightmare.” Three days later a dryer fire started at nearby Dussindale Park Nursing Home, but this was a different story. The nursing home’s dryer was equipped with JLA’s Sensor Activated Fire Extinguishing (“Safe”) system, and the fire was put out almost immediately. The home’s manager Ruth Kelly said: “It was all over within seconds and just one garment was damaged.” The point is we shouldn’t be regarding fire prevention as yet a further cost or another set of burdensome regulations with which we must comply. If you buy a new tumble dryer with a fire suppression system it will undoubtedly have a cost implication, but it makes good business sense. The same goes for installing sprinkler systems, a precaution some still neglect.
First, there’s a good case to be made to your insurance company for a reduction in your premiums based on the reduced fire risk. Next, consider the effect of a fire on your business. Our news story in September about the burnt-out laundry told of the frantic efforts being made to arrange for nearby laundries to help out with the work that was rapidly becoming a backlog. The fire at Mary Chapman Court nursing home left it without a laundry for two weeks. Yet the nightmare scenario was avoided at Dussindale Park Nursing Home.
I won’t lecture you about the moral duty to your workforce. But I will ask: for how much longer are lives, livelihoods and businesses going to be risked like this? It’s no wonder Dr Neale says: “Action is called for now.”
Glenn Tomkins (gtomkins@wilmington.co.uk)
