And in response to Grenfell, the argument is tenants don't like fire drills; just wow. Eventually everyone forgets the reason for regulations...is there a named law for this phenomenon?
Is “stay in your flat while the building burns down around you” a common fire safety plan in the UK? Because that seems scary as hell. And also negligent.
There’s certainly scenarios in which you might need to evacuate, like a bomb threat, but we are speaking about internal fire, in which case there’s more danger in hundreds of people fleeing in panic down stairs (whether that’s 1 stair case or 2) than staying inside.
Is there? I’ve never seen people panic when a fire alarm goes off. Maybe if the fire alarm is going off as the building is filling with deadly smoke people would panic. But then that seems appropriate (or at least better than sitting and waiting to die of smoke inhalation).
Pretty sure the Grenfell situation would have ended better by having everyone evacuate. And yes, the incompetent cladding work makes that a special case. But a huge amount of our codes are for a special case. Every so often it saves 70 lives.
If the concrete and fire doors are doing their supposed job, then the fire brigade can just wait. If the concrete and fire doors are not doing their job, then getting people out is far more important than getting the fire brigade in.
Wait until the people in the apartment on fire die? (Either it starts in an apartment, or a common are which would block the escape of inhabitants living on there or higher)
24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside.
> The building would never be on fire
The entire building was on fire. 72 people died.
> The problem with Grenfell was that building regulations had been violated, at which point, all bets about safety are off.
Mistakes get made. Hence redundancy, like two staircases. If you're going to design for 'no mistakes ever made' then don't bother with any fire systems as a fire is a mistake in the first place.
Because the exterior was flammable, which isn't the norm and is actually criminal.
So is arson. Newsflash: sometimes people do criminal things.
But we try to design to cope with it rather than just saying ‘but they aren’t allowed to start that fire so no need to guard against it.’
And it turned out it was the norm, hence the huge panic to fix it in so many buildings.
The South Tower had one remaining stairwell survive impact and 18 people were actually able to evacuate from above the impact zone, which is actually pretty impressive when you consider that the impact was on floors 77-85, and the people who called emergency services were told to stay in place. One of the survivors was actually only 20 feet (6 m) from the left wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Praimnath
That being said, a lot of fire codes and related legislation had to be updated in the wake of 9/11. Among the many other dumb things:
* the stairwells were all extremely close to each other. In the North Tower they were 70 ft (21 m) apart and in the South Tower they were 200 ft (60 m) apart, which is probably why one stairwell survived in the South Tower and none did in the North.
* stairwells were only surrounded by drywall instead of concrete, which is another contributing factor to why so many of them were rendered inoperable. If you're not familiar with drywall, you can literally punch a hole through it with your arm.
* stairwells were built with a 44 inch width because it was assumed that the average person had a shoulder to shoulder width of 22 inches (55 cm). This slowed down evacuation a lot.
* the fire code was incorrect. the building was only half full but took much longer to partially empty than a full evacuation of the full occupancy tower was projected to take. so codes were revised.
* there were not enough stairwells according to code. but how might this be? well, the owner and constructor, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is a federally created entity, and so is not actually subject to local fire codes. (This last point wasn't actually addressed; they're still not actually required to follow NYC fire codes, but they did at least do so for the new iteration of the towers.)
* In a previous attack on the WTC, people were evacuated from the roof, but since that incident the roof doors were locked to prevent base jumpers from gaining access.
https://www.history.com/news/world-trade-center-stairwell-de...
Cancer outrage? You get the California meaningless stickers.
Police brutality? Racism? You get polarizing protests and no real change.
Outrage is at best the first step. But it's really the sign of decades (or more) of gridlocked politics.
I mean, think of all the wasted space and weight having 8 exit doors on a airplane; they don't crash often
If we could choose to fly on the same plane with 4 doors that would give us more legroom and get us to our destination in less time, I believe a lot of us would make that choice.
At least, not enough to make your flight measurably shorter.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/47369/how-is-th...
If there were fewer doors there would me more seats, and the weight of the seat, passenger, and luggage would far outweigh the weight saving on the door.
And no, you ain't getting more legroom.
And if we had all doors except one passenger seat, it might be even safer.
We neither optimize for absolute highest survival rate nor for absolute highest convenience/efficiency.
The question is-- how much does the second staircase improve survival? Is it the most economic way to get that survival difference?
seriously, who is pushing this weird anti-fire-code agenda and why is it in slate
Why its in slate is confusing, especially since the article definitely has a pro stance, with little research to back it up
why is questioning a regulation that already lacks evidence for its efficacy requires research?
it's plenty of research to point at the other parts of the world that is not in flames despite higher urban density and only one egress per unit.
"This website is a tool to make sense of the wicked problem of the second egress in Canada and prepare a building code change."
It is super biased, and the bigger issue is that it is impossible record what-if situations like how many minor US fires could have been major tragedies if they had a single stair instead of two, and firefighters could tackle a fire from two sides.
Just looking at one of their sources even states that rapid smoke/fire in stairways and vertical opens is a significant portion blocked-escape deaths
-- https://cjr.ufv.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Murdoch-Univer...
Another for canada clearly says a majority of deaths are "trapped-by" -- http://nfidcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Fire-statist...
This whole fire (and building) safety code problem is that it's driven by superstition instead of data. It mandates certain solutions instead of outcomes. (Eg. the railing spacings to prevent kids from being able to fall through.)
Many developed countries have similar outcomes without the same strictness of code, plus housing is so overregulated in so many ways it's no wonder that many people argue for shifting the set-point in these trade-offs in order to help more people to have housing.
Of course ideally society would address poverty so there trade-off between safety and other aspects would be just academic.