The UPS Room Fire and the Client on a Call
At 15:10 in a four-storey call centre in Mohali housing about 600 staff, the lobby guard notices a smell of burning PVC and light grey smoke coming from the UPS and server room on the second floor. A facilities boy has already thrown a bucket of water on the smoking panel; there is a sharp crack and the smoke thickens. Another employee is running towards the room with a 4.5 kg CO2 extinguisher, but he has never used one. The fire alarm panel shows a fault in Zone 2 but the general alarm has not sounded, and the floor supervisor says 'we don't want to disturb the client call'. On the third floor a wheelchair user is at her desk with a colleague beside her. The guard's post has one working handheld radio and the main gate register. The fire brigade number is 101, and the site's assembly point is the parking area across the service road.
1. Give the guard's first five actions in priority order and the reason for each, including what he does about the floor supervisor and the alarm.
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The principle is life safety first, then confinement, then property - and the floor supervisor's commercial concern ranks below all three.
- Raise the alarm. Break the nearest manual call point to sound the general alarm, or announce the evacuation of floors 2, 3 and 4 on the PA. A zone fault on the panel does not mean there is no fire; the alarm is not the supervisor's decision to take, and 'do not disturb the client call' is exactly the instruction that turns a small fire into a fatal one. He tells the supervisor plainly that the alarm has been raised and the building is evacuating.
- Call 101 and 112 himself, or send a named person and confirm the call was made. The message: full address, 'fire in the UPS/server room on the second floor, smoke, about 600 people in the building'. A guard never assumes someone else has called.
- Stop the water. No more buckets. Water on live electrical equipment conducts, which is what the crack and the thickening smoke indicate, and it puts the person throwing it at risk of shock.
- Control the extinguisher attempt. If the employee with the CO2 can see the seat of the fire from the doorway and it is small, one trained attempt from the doorway with a second person at his shoulder; if the smoke is thick or the fire is beyond wastebasket size, close the door and leave it to the fire service. PVC smoke gives off hydrogen chloride - one breath in a closed room can drop a person.
- Run the evacuation through the stairs, directing people away from the second-floor lobby, checking the toilets on each floor on the way down, and holding the assembly point headcount across the service road.
Throughout, the gate and the fire-tender route stay clear and nobody re-enters.
2. Is CO2 the right choice here? Explain the technique, why the water was wrong, and the exact points at which the guard or the employee must stop and withdraw.
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Yes, CO2 is correct for a live electrical fire: it is non-conductive, it does not damage the equipment, and it leaves no residue. ABC dry powder also works on electrical fires but blinds the room and ruins the electronics; foam and water are both wrong on energised equipment.
Why the water was wrong: mains-fed water is a conductor, and a jet onto a live panel can arc back through the thrower. The sharp crack and the thickening smoke are the signature of that happening. The boy also used his body as the delivery system - standing close, at floor level, in a room filling with toxic smoke.
PASS technique: Pull the pin; Aim at the base of the fire, not the flames; Squeeze the handle; Sweep side to side. Stay 2–3 metres back, keep the exit at your back, and give one short test burst first. A 4.5 kg CO2 gives roughly 10–15 seconds of discharge, so it is one attempt, not a firefighting campaign.
Withdraw immediately if: the fire does not go out with that one extinguisher, it re-ignites after the extinguisher empties, smoke drops to floor level, heat reaches the door or the door handle becomes too hot to touch, or the room has become unsafe to stand in. Then close the door, account for everyone, and wait for the fire service with a clear briefing.
A second CO2 point: in a small closed server room the gas displaces oxygen. After discharge, nobody should stand inside the room without breathing apparatus.
3. How should the guard deal with the wheelchair user on the third floor and with accounting for people at the assembly point, and what does he hand over to the fire officer?
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The wheelchair user. The colleague beside her is the most useful resource, so the message goes to that floor through the PA or the internal phone: move to the nearest protected staircase or refuge area and wait for the fire service evacuation team. Do not use the lift in a fire. If smoke is entering the floor, two trained staff carry her down the stairs in an evacuation chair - not in her own wheelchair, which is left behind. The guard's job is not to run up four floors; it is to keep the stairway exit clear at the lobby and to know the facts.
Accounting at the assembly point. Floor wardens report head counts against the visitor and staff lists; the guard adds the gate register - contractors, delivery staff and visitors who signed in and may not be on any floor list are the people most often missed. Names of the unaccounted go to the fire officer at once, together with their last known floor and department. Nobody re-enters, including employees who want their phones or laptops; the guard's refusal at the barrier is the control that matters most in the first twenty minutes.
Handover to the fire officer, in one calm sentence each: 'Fire in the UPS room, second floor, water was thrown on it before we arrived, power status unknown.' 'Three persons unaccounted: one wheelchair user on the third floor, north stair, with a colleague; two contractors last signed in at 14:20.' Then hand over the site floor plan and the gate register copy, and record the time the alarm sounded and the time 101 was called. Those two timestamps are what every subsequent inquiry will ask for.