FIRE PREVENTION INSIDE YOUR BARN
Fire prevention, for the most part, consists of
practices, that is, the things we do on a day-to-day basis to maintain a
fire-safe building. Knowing
fire propagation requirements will help you to keep an eye out for possible
hazards.
Obviously, the most common source of heat is an
open flame--a match. Stringently enforce the No Smoking rule, not just by
posting signs, but by firmly telling a smoker to refrain. There's a "code" that's
come down through the years which implies that a horse owner can smoke in his or
her own barn, but not in someone else's. Perhaps this "code" evolved
because a horse owner supposedly knew the "safe" areas in his or her
barn. However it came about, the "code" is not only dangerous,
it's absurd.
Some offenders need to be threatened before they'll obey;
if you find yourself in a situation such as this, seriously consider how much risk
you're willing to take to keep the peace. A person willfully violating the
No Smoking rule is not someone you want around your barn. They not only jeopardize
the safety of the horses, they can be responsible for the injury or death of other
people in your barn. Their smoking in your barn, by the way, could also invalidate
your insurance policy. So, lay it on the line if you have to: either the
smoking materials go, or the violator goes. And, if you issue the ultimatum,
follow through! If you are boarding your horse in a barn where smoking is
a problem, look around for a new facility. Even if you find one without all the
amenities of your current barn, if they value fire and other safety practices,
that’s where your horse is best protected. Don’t forget for one minute that there
are no safe smoking areas in a barn, and every real horse owner knows that.
Open flames
are not only a problem with smokers. I know of a barn that has individual
water pipes to each stall. In wintertime, some of the water spigots at the
stalls ice up, making it difficult or impossible to open the spigot. Up until
a few years ago the owner would thaw the troublesome spigots with a disposable
lighter. It took only a few seconds per stall to thaw the spigots, so the
owner didn't consider the lighter to be a hazard. One freezing morning the
owner was thawing a spigot when the horse in the stall suddenly put his nose up
to the lighter. He jerked away quickly, but the hay hanging from his mouth
ignited. He dropped the mouthful, which fell onto the hay flake at his feet,
igniting that. Fortunately, the hay was close to the newly-filled water bucket. Dumping
the water on the hay extinguished the fire, but the heart-stopping experience was
a forceful lesson for the owner, who has not used a lighter in the barn since that
incident.
When I was a
student at Ohio University, I boarded my horse, Sunny, at the Athens County Fairgrounds
in one of the stalls leased by Red Currens, a harness horse owner and trainer. The
wooden shed row barns were so old (probably built in the mid-1800s) that every
now and then a board would drop off when the old square nails finally rusted through. Two
stalls down from Sunny’s stall, a stall was completely enclosed (not fire-proofed,
just enclosed floor to ceiling with boards) for use as a “day room” for the trainers
and grooms. In the center of this “room” was a pot-bellied stove, that
during the winter months was kept constantly stoked so the black metal appeared
maroon from being continuously hot. Kentucky bourban and Ohio moonshine were
always on hand and more than one person was always half-sloshed on the stuff. Every
now and then they would amble off to clean a stall or two, and looking back I’m
amazed that the horses were not (to my knowledge) accidentally speared or stabbed
by those inebriated grooms. Of course, back then we only had metal manure
forks with sharp points on the tines; I don’t think it’s as easy to hurt a horse
with our plastic-tined forks, although I wouldn’t want anyone to try an experiment. But,
from a fire safety standpoint, the pot-bellied stove was a tragedy waiting
to happen, and coupled with our moonshine-filled grooms and trainers, it’s a miracle
that those barns survived winter after winter. What scares me now is the
potential peril in which I placed Sunny. So, my lesson learned in retrospect,
beside not permitting the installation of wood or coal burning stoves in your barn,
is that you don’t want intoxicated people in your barn any more than you want smokers
in your barn—they are too irresponsible to condone under any circumstance.