I was just curious how other F.D's handle fire inspections in their areas. Do you have a dedicated Fire Inspector, does your duty crew do inspections or both? How does your F.D. correct violations?
My F.D. has an Assistant Chief in charge of the Fire Prevention Bureau as well as each duty crew going out and performing inspections on a day to day basis.
I'd like to hear from both full time and volunteer F.D's on this one. I realize that full time F.D's have an advantage as far as manpower on a daily basis, but I'm curious how volunteer F.D's handle fire inspections.
No, I got your point. I understand things could have changed after the inspection, I'm just saying if no exit lights were working and all extinguishers out of date, would lead to some suspicions.
I understand about checking some things, but being a regular cook and shopper, I have to be honest, when I'm shopping, I'm not really in inspection mode. I'm more concerned about getting what we need and getting out. If I do notice something obvious, like a display, etc, I will make a quick mention and check it out my next day back.
This is why I also believe in duty crews doing inspections as a crew, because you do become a bit more familiar. When in inspection mode, I will be more thorough, I can now go and check in the back, I can get a look at the fryer and hood systems (which are serviced semi-annually) etc. The systems is the key for me with such an issue as you mentioned (if said store did have one) because there should be a different date. Thing is, even if we are just walking around, we don't get to go in all the places we could if doing an actual inspection.
No, I understand about finding the issue while routinely shopping or in the course of duties, we even mentioned issues if on calls too, but when all extinguishers are out of date and all exit lights are not working, to me that leads me to question things a bit more. Pretty tough for everything to go to crap after such an inspection. I agree with always being on your toes, but the situation you present, just speaks differently to me than just the random display in front of an extinguisher or the random light out.
We don't do fire inspections at all. This is left to the Code Enforcement Branch in the Fire Prevention Division(firemen fall into the Operations Division). These are all civilian employees that do nothing BUT inspections. This is great for me because I have no interest at all in doing inspections. On top of that, there are only a handful of companies that would even have time to due them due to the high run volume. http://fems.dc.gov/DC/FEMS/Divisions/Office+of+the+Fire+Marshal/Fir...