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Comment by maxcan | Hacker News Reader

Its exceedingly likely that that number does not include fire escapes and emergency exits.

Maybe so. This article elides a lot of details... in fact, they don't touch on fire safety aspects at all as far as I can tell. So maybe there are sufficient accommodations made in terms of fire safety. It's hard to say.

But... if the design really was done by an amateur architect who probably has little or no background specifically related to fire/life safety issues vis-a-vis building design, and it truly hasn't been modified from his design... I don't know. I'll just say "color me skeptical" for now.

If I'm ultimately proven wrong, then I would actually be very happy. I'd much rather suffer the indignity of having to admit I was wrong about something on HN, than watch a news report detailing hundreds of student deaths on campus.

Is there a local jurisdiction in this country that approves permits without checking if they‘re valid for the local fire code? That just doesn‘t pass the smell test.

My alma mater had to go back and redo a building based on fire marshal concerns.

Is there a local jurisdiction in this country that approves permits without checking if they‘re valid for the local fire code? That just doesn‘t pass the smell test.

I would hope not. The article describes this as a "proposal" and I'm not sure how far along they are with it. Maybe they haven't even gotten as far as submitting a design for fire safety inspection yet. Or maybe they have, got feedback, and made adjustments in response, and the article above glossed over that. It's hard to say based only on what we know from TFA at the moment.

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