Whether you have a large restaurant or a small café, a kitchen fire is one of the biggest threats to the longevity of your business. Every year, fire causes more deaths in the U.S. than all natural disasters combined. A kitchen fire not only endangers the lives of staff and patrons but can also shut down your business indefinitely. A professional kitchen suppression system can reduce the risk of fire by containing it before it spreads to other parts of the building. The APFE kitchen suppression system includes emergency fire alarms, fire extinguishers, and emergency fire sprinklers.
A fire can start so easily in a commercial kitchen in restaurants, hotels, or catering facilities where many people cook simultaneously. According to FEMA, 30.4% of fires in non-residential buildings in 2017 were due to cooking. Cooking fires are usually a result of unattended stoves and ovens and human error, as opposed to mechanical failure of the equipment. A commercial kitchen fire can be prevented with a kitchen suppression system, which offers many benefits to a business owner.
Complete Kitchen Coverage
There is a lot of equipment in a large commercial kitchen and many people at each station. The high level of heat being generated from all of the equipment means a higher risk for a fire. A suppression system can handle fires from all kitchen equipment, including fryers, range tops, broilers and hoods.
Quick Detection
A commercial kitchen fire can spread quickly with multiple sources of heat coming from different cooking stations. Kitchen suppression systems work quickly to detect the fire and put it out faster than other wet chemical systems. However, quick detection also requires regular fire sprinklers inspections and maintenance to ensure they are working optimally. Not only that, quick detection also requires regular fire alarm inspection and maintenance.
Targeted Fire Extinguishing
Once the fire has been detected, the nozzles that are located above the flames expel wet chemicals. The chemicals are designed to cut off the supply of oxygen to the fire. At the same time, the gas line to the appliance shuts off so the fire has no fuel to continue to burn. This means that a fire on one range can be put out before it spreads to another range. The surrounding appliances, along with the food being cooked on them, are not ruined. The quick response of the system results in less loss to the kitchen.
Other Benefits of a Kitchen Suppression System
In addition to reacting quickly to fires, these systems also protect employees and may affect your insurance rates. In order to comply with OSHA standards for safety, business owners must provide a safe work environment for their employees. Commercial kitchen employees benefit from a safer workplace created by a kitchen suppression system. Since a suppression system extinguishes the fire before it can spread, employees can safely leave the kitchen. As an added benefit, a suppression system might lower your insurance rates. Since this type of system covers more than a sprinkler system, there is less of a chance of smoke and heat buildup. The savings in insurance rates might help to offset the cost of the suppression system.
If you have not thought about your kitchen suppression systems in a while, it might be time to revisit them. Many business owners realize the benefit of installing these types of systems in order to protect the building and the people in it. APFE provides emergency fire alarm monitoring and and emergency fire sprinkler service!
