IREN C BORJA; SO RIZELLE ANNE R PALTAO; NELSON N SIBAYAN 

The study focused to analyze the fire safety enforcement in fire safety inspection certificate (FSIC) issuances for CY 2020 and 2021 at Binalonan Fire Station (BFP). FSIC issued by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) served as an assurance that a certain facility, structure or building/occupancy has been duly inspected and deemed compliant to the Fire Code of the Philippines or Republic Act (RA) 9514. Non-compliance of this Code resulted in the loss of thousand of lives and billion losses in property damage. The objectives of the study were to identify the total number of applicants applying for Business Permits as a prerequisite for the issuance of FSIC in BFS; determine the number of Fire Safety Inspectors (FSI) who will conduct the ocular inspections before the approval for the issuance of FSIC; and, assess the effectiveness of FSI for the conduct of inspections before the issuance of FSIC. Descriptive statistics was used to organize the body of raw data collected so that these data can be easily understood. In inferential statistics, conclusions were drawn from the population of the organized data formulated. Therefore, the weighted mean and percentage were computed for the descriptive statistics. To describe the importance and significance of the respondents’ answers, problems encountered and proposed measures, point rating scale was adopted.

Based on records, BFS has 1,252 establishment in CY 2020 and 1,103 in CY 2021 due to the business closure during COVID-19 pandemic. BFS has complemented with five (5) FSI who conducted fire safety inspection in the area. The demographic profile of the business owner respondents included the proximity of the business location to the fire station, business owners’ status and compliance to FSIC. On the Business Owner’s respondents 73.47% are within the business area and only 26.53% of the businesses are outside the business area with 90.14% for renewal of application and only 9.86% for new application. All of the respondents (100%) secured FSIC.

Among the (5) five (1.67%) FSI and 294 (98.33%) Business Owners. With the ratio of 1:1 one FSI per establishment to be inspected, all of the FSI are BFP Uniformed Personnel. Majority of the business owners assessed that the level of effectiveness of FSI were highly effective with the frequency of 270 and percentage distribution of 91.84% while 8.16% percent of the respondents or equivalent to a frequency of 24 considered the inspectors effective during inspection. Overall assessment of the respondents showed that FSI are highly effective during inspection with the over-all mean of 43.93 and standard deviation of 5.51 which may indicate that data are clustered around the mean value of the assessment of the respondents.