Welcome to the SafetyCloud Blog

As the schools close, and everyone gets ready for the festivities, take note of these essential holiday safety tips. 

Developing your company's required emergency plan ensures all personnel and visitors can act swiftly and decisively in emergency situations, and to minimise the effects of an emergency situation. NOSA will help you to implement the procedures and guidelines to prepare your staff in handling, rectifying and/or minimising emergencies that could potentially affect your work activities.

The fires that have broken out in Pretoria West in the last few days once again prove the importance of workplace fire safety. Fire safety and general occupational safety issues are generally overlooked by management and staff during normal, everyday workplace operations. You can take the following five steps to ensure your workplace fire safety practices are in place to reduce the risk of fires occurring in the general working environment.

Yesterday, seven were confirmed dead as the result of a fire in the City York building in the Johannesburg CBD. One of the victims died when he jumped from the burning building. Four people who were stuck on the roof were thankfully saved, as well as fifty other people. Investigations are underway, but as of now, the cause is unknown.

The topic of fire - and fire safety - is extremely topical at present, both locally and internationally. Which is why we thought you'd be keen to see the latest article published on the SAMTRAC blog page. It takes a look at the recent tragic fire at Grenfell Towers in the UK, with nine essential points every safety professional should note when ensuring a building is equipped to handle similar kinds of emergencies. 

In the week that ended on the 9^th of June, South Africans were just recovering from the devastation left by the massive storm in the Cape, when they were confronted with the news that Knysna – and pretty much all of Knysna – was burning. At the time of writing this story, seven people have died, including a farmworker, his pregnant wife and toddler son, with 10 000 people having been evacuated from their homes and taken to safety.

Remember when the Durban skyline was blackened by a fire that blazed within – and without – a local factory. The fire broke out on the morning of Friday the 24^th of March, at a 200 000 m² Transnet-owned wax-production facility, and eventually razed the building to the ground. Alex Gloster, a Durban Fire Department commander on the scene of the factory fire, said that firefighters had done a ‘world class job’ on what was ‘…certainly the biggest fire of my career.’

Fire safety is an important factor to consider on a day-to-day basis and especially in the workplace. A fire can be started in most incidents and can have a detrimental impact if not dealt with correctly. We have decided to breakdown the following components to consider when looking into fire safety: