In Slovenia, fires often occur on farms and other agricultural buildings. The main
causes of fires were spontaneous combustion, ignition due to lightning, ignition
due to electricity problems, arson or explosion. The objective of the thesis was
to conduct an exercise on evacuation of dairy cows in the barn in case of fire, to
find out how cows behave during evacuation and how firefighters handle cows
during evacuation. Based on the evacuation experiment, we hypothesise that
firefighters would evacuate dairy cows more quickly and easily if they followed
the farmer's instructions and if the firefighters were already experienced. The
cows were initially scared, then they calmed down and waited in front of the
exit. We also conducted two online surveys asking Slovenian farmers (135 fully
answered surveys) about their knowledge of basic fire safety and Slovenian
voluntary and professional firefighters (447 fully answered surveys) about their
knowledge of how to handle animals in a fire. Significantly more firefighters
confirmed that they would know how to handle animals during an evacuation,
but they also want to receive various instructions about the farm when they go
out to the intervention so they can better plan for it. Significantly more farmers
are willing to finance the creation of the fire plan. There were no significant
differences in the following fire safety measures between farmers who are
firefighters and those who are not.
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