Bonfire Night Safety
Every November, thousands of people across the whole of the UK don thick coats, woolly hats, gloves and scarves to make a pilgrimage to their local park or sports club, huddling together to enjoy an organised fireworks display.
For anyone not familiar with the history of bonfire night, Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot then this CBBC article provides a short and simple explanation.
Sadly however, each year we hear of someone who has been injured due to a lack of safety precautions or simply not realising how powerful fireworks and sparklers are. We discovered some sobering bonfire night statistics on the Bonfire Night Safety website. Did you know that the combined heat of 3 sparklers is the equivalent temperature of a blow torch?
If you are planning to hold an organised bonfire night fireworks display then we are on hand to make sure your event is as safe and as well planned as you can possibly make it.
It’s important that you do a risk assessment beforehand. This is something Ezra Safety Group can help you with. As well as the obvious risks posed by fire and explosives, it’s also important to consider other factors such as:
- Who is going to be looking after the fireworks and setting them off? Will you need to contract the services of a professional firework display company?
- Check the classification of your firework (this will be on the fireworks label). If it’s a category F2 or F3 firework then these are classified as safe for consumers to use. Spectators must be at least 15 meters away from a Cat F2 firework and minimum 25 metres away from a Cat F3 firework. If you want Category 4 fireworks as part of your display, only a professional firework operator is allowed to handle these.
- Have you thought about who is going to build the bonfire? How do you plan to keep them safe from injury?
- Traffic management – are you expecting large crowds? How will this impact on the local road network? Where will they park?
- Have you got a contingency plan in case of high winds and bad weather?
- What arrangements do you have in place to make sure trained first aiders are on hand to deal with any accidents?
- Will you need stewards, marshals and/or security?
If you’re planning any kind of large scale fireworks display, be it for Bonfire Night, a religious festival such as Diwali or a community celebration such as a New Year fireworks display, then you’ll find a full list of things to consider on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website. There are also some handy guides to fireworks safety and the firework code on the RoSPA website. Their guides are available in other languages: Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.
How Ezra Safety Group can help
There may be a lot to think about when you are planning a fireworks display, but we can take a lot of the pressure off you by making conducting audits and risk assessments to make sure you’ve covered all bases.
Why not give us a call or drop us an email to find out more?
