Can your employees get out in an emergency?

摘要

In the wake of a deadly fire in China, OSHA has asked inspectors to make sure employees have a way out of the building in the event of fire, explosion, or other crisis. OSHA refers to this as "means of egress." On June 4, a fire at a poultry processing plant took the lives of at least 119 Chinese workers. Similar tragedies have occurred in the United States. In September 1991, 25 people died as a result of a fire at a poultry plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. The cause of the fire was the ignition of hydraulic oil from a ruptured line near a natural-gas-fired cooker. But OSHA concluded that exit and fire safety violations contributed significantly to the number of deaths and injuries.