Euralarm, which represents the electronic fire and security industry, providing leadership and expertise for industry, market, policy makers and standards bodies, has successfully extended its database with relevant information on residential fire safety.

Last year, the Task Group Domestic Life Safety was reactivated and started its work on the important issue of fire safety in the domestic environment. During the European Fire Safety Week, focusing on citizen safety at the heart of the energy transition, Thorsten Teichert, chair of the Task Group, spoke about the progress that had been made.

The Task Group resumed, Euralarm said, due to the fact that in addition to 5,000 deaths per year due to residential fires, more than 2.7 million people end up in emergency rooms where fire is the cause. In recent years homes are increasingly becoming ‘intelligent’ due to the emergence of new technology, but these have become homes in which fires are also spreading ever faster.

Euralarm noted that research has shown that, three decades ago, residents had 17 minutes to escape their homes in the event of a fire. Because today’s homes and the furniture in them burn faster, that escape time is now only a few minutes.

To properly ensure the domestic life safety, be it fire safety or protection against CO poisoning, Thorsten Teichert, chair of the task group, said it is necessary to have a good overview of all related standards: “Over the past year we have fully updated the database with information about standards, legislation, national application guidelines and statistical data about residential buildings. The database now covers all EU member states as well as the EEA states (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and other affiliated or associated states, like Switzerland and the UK.

“The database is not only targeted at smoke alarm but also on CO alarms. That makes it more difficult because quite some countries don’t have data available on this. There are even data available on the causes of domestic fires in the Nordic countries. These data could also become part of the database but that would require an extension of the database. A decision on whether or how intensively we will look at the statistics on fires and fire injuries and fire deaths in 2023 has not yet been made.”

Thorsten added that the major challenge now is the diversity of the available data: “One year ago, we started with gathering data and updating the database. Thanks to the work that everybody has done and the collaboration between all group members, we have succeeded in that. We now have to decide what our next steps will be and if we are able to make that step considering the time that our members have available.”

As part of the active involvement in citizen safety, the Euralarm Task Group decided to support the European Fire Safety Week which took place last week.

“The Task Group Domestic Life Safety is actively involved in the preparation of a part of the program”, Thorsten Teichert added. “Both the European Fire Safety Alliance and the Task Group Domestic Life Safety are involved in raising the awareness on the topic of fire safety and influencing stakeholders to make the right decisions when it comes to legislation.”