Study on workers’ evacuation in an industrial company

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of a training period on the worker’s behaviour, and consequently on their evacuation time, in case of emergency.Three fire drills were undertaken, being the first one preceded by a warning signal.The following variables were considered:
• Initial time, i.e. time taken by the first worker to reach the respective section meeting point.
• Final time, i.e. time taken by the last worker to reach the respective meeting point.
• Average age of the workers in each section.
• Number of workers in each section.
• Average distance of each section relatively to the corresponding meeting point.The plant’s fire risk was evaluated by the Gretener method and evacuation times were compared with calculated values through theoretical expressions.A factorial method of data analysis, named Principal Component Analysis, was considered.In spite of data scarceness, it could be observed in the last fire drill a better attitude towards fire risk and an increased awareness of safety issues.The workers’ age as well the number of workers seems to have no influence in the evacuation time.