Emergency Health and Safety
The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris made headlines around the world on Sunday evening when the 800 year old building caught fire. It took less than thirty minutes for the fire in the iconic building to spread from the attic of the building to the rooftop. According to fire fighters in Paris the reason why it took almost nine hours to contain the fire was because the building ceiling was built of wood. The height of the building also caused a major challenge as it allowed more oxygen in the building for the fire to spread complicating the efforts of the firefighters to reach the flames. The paper explores some of the issues surrounding emergency health and safety when such as disaster occurs
Given the fact that the building was under renovation, both the workers and the general public were at a risk of any risk that was associated with the activities that were taking place. As a result of the fire people were exposed to dangerous chemicals, due to the dense smoke that was being emitted. Injuries could have also occurred due to the collapse of the church’s tower. The cathedral caught fire just a few days before the catholic faithful celebrated their annual Easter holiday which usually attract thousands of visitors to Paris during the season (Buchanan et al., 2019).
Service managers should keep in mind in safety and health risks associated to fire because it may result to injuries and cause of death of both the people working in the building or the high numbers of tourist who visit the iconic building every day. In addition, fire may lead to job losses and destroy buildings, which some have burned down and have never been rebuilt (Gudotti, & Clough, 2015). Finally service managers should always be cautious about such eventualities since people could lose their jobs if their place of works burns down
Conclusively, a fire service managers have the responsibilities of preventing the occurrence of a fire and minimizing the risks associated with it. In addition, they can play an important role in preventing the risks of significant job losses when a resinous fire occurs at the place of work. The dense smoke that was coming out of the burning cathedral could have hazardous effects of the people of Paris.
References
Buchanan, L., Cai, W., Glanz, J., Grothjan, E., McCann, A., & Parshina-Kottas, Y. et al. (2019). How the Notre-Dame Cathedral Fire Spread. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/15/world/europe/paris-notre-dame-fire.html
Gudotti, T., & Clough, V. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.pu.13.050192.001055