Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
architecturalrecord.com
architecturalrecord.com
Yet, on the other hand, the safety doctrine unnerves me:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place.
Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction? The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature, I can't see people being comfortable with the 'stay in your room' safety advice after this kind of event. People are going to follow their instincts and head for the stairs, and things are not going to be pleasant if there's A: only one and B: it's blocked.
One idea that comes to mind is building entirely fire-resistant steel and glass bridges between medium high-rise buildings. If you're too high up to use the emergency out-door stairs, but the (single) interior staircase is blocked, you could move sideways to your neighbours. Security and privacy concerns about having easy access to neighbouring properties could be mitigated by having safety-glass dividing doors with emergency hammers next to the lock. The lock could itself be opened by mutual agreement of both sides in non-emergencies.
Because that
1) that costs more money (if you object, "How dare we value money more than human lives?", replace "costs money" with "requires a greater amount of the limited quantity of human labor"), which means fewer homes are built, which means it costs more to purchase/rent a home.
2) Means buildings have to deal with the inherent topological constraints of double-loaded corridors (ie, apartments can't "cross-cut" the building, allowing cross-ventilation/greater number of windows.
If your goal is to save lives, there are other things you can regulate that are orders of magnitude more cost-effective. Where the expected price of each saved life is just millions instead of billions.
When there was another discussion on this topic a while ago, I spent some time reading about fire deaths in Finland. Finland is a country with more fire deaths per capita than most Western countries. Partly due to attitudes, and partly because of the prevalence of saunas, which are almost as big fire hazards as kitchens.
What I found was that fire deaths that could have been prevented by a second staircase are extremely rare. When people die in a fire in an apartment building, it's almost always in the unit the fire started. Either the people didn't notice it quickly enough, or the fire blocked the front door.
I agree. At least in my limited experience, it seems a lot of the deaths in the US are related to either intoxication or sleeping. In these states, it's common for the person to have never even been aware of the danger.
That won't work as evidence that US fire policies aren't helping. You need data from somewhere where those policies aren't in place, like presumably Finland.
Policies that would help save lives are sprinklers in all houses. This policy is controversial due to the cost and maintenance involved. But the very scenario that has brought this about was a Maryland politician's son burnt down his house and died while passed out drunk. Now that state has a law requiring sprinklers.
No, you didn't identify any logical support. If the American policy ensures that people who are aware of the danger always survive, then (a) that is what the policy is supposed to do, and (b) it will guarantee that American fire deaths all happen to people who were not aware of the danger.
Given that, if the policy worked as advertised, it would guarantee exactly the observation that you see, it cannot be the case that this observation is evidence against the effectiveness of the policy.
The data you are looking for literally does not exist. That’s not something people closely monitor.
Since pushing hard for fire alarms and mandatory retrofit obligation, Germany was able to reduce fire deaths by almost 50% (study in German):
https://www.hekatron.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Studie_Wirksam...
Better homeless shelter policies & mental health support would be wildly more effective at preventing fire deaths than code enforcement.
On the other hand... this are the results of a rather large gas explosion: https://novice.svet24.si/clanek/novice/crna-kronika/5be30a53... and another one: https://www.24ur.com/novice/crna-kronika/v-stanovanju-eksplo...
Fires usually stay contained to one unit for quite a lot of time, especially if the firefighters water everything from both sides (windows and doors).
That is a colossal amount of heat delivered to the surrounding units, and still no propagation.
I agree, cabling is a pain but oh my are they taking us for a ride with these newbuilds with easy cabling. Houses are no better here. They say these newbuilds are all fireproof and engineers come once a week to test everything. Of course, I hope we never have to find out if the certificate is worth anything.
All in all, those Yugoslav socialist buildings put these newbuilds to shame. Even those 40 year old locally made lifts are better than whatever Otis is installing into newbuilds these days. Our lift is loud, shaking. Never experienced that kind of shaking in any of socialist buildings. I suspect though that newbuilds in Slovenia these days are pretty similar cardboard boxes...
Add to that the lack sprinklers, and a council that is not sympathetic to the residents there and we got a disaster.
It was a confluence of indifference by the council to residents calls to sort out sprinklers and firedoors, pandering to richer residents of Kensington: the cladding only went on to make richer residents view better.
Add on faming of results about how fire worthy the cladding was by the people selling it, and it being badly fitted so fire could travel up the building underneath it.
And then after this tragedy, how little was done in its wake.
> the cladding only went on to make richer residents view better.
The cladding should have reduced the residents' heating bills substantially, reducing fuel poverty and helping the environment. In fact one of the reasons the building was clad in turns-out-its-highly-flammable Celotex instead of a truly non-flammable insulation like Rockwool was because of its higher U-value.
Grenfell was a failure of regulations to be applied and bad retrofitting.
The cladding was supposed to conform to a specific rating that means it doesn't cause fire spread. Ie, it can burn, but as soon as a heat source is taken away it stopped burning (its more complex than that, but you get the idea that its not supposed to just burn like crazy)
What actually happened is that the fire rating that was given to it was suspect, and it wasn't applied correctly. I had assumed that the type of insolation (either EPS or Polyisocyanurate) was fire proof, as in I doesn't burn like a plastic bag when exposed to flame. Because thats what the fire rating implies. However there are two standards and its a bit hazy. You can have something like rockwool, that doesn't burn as well as industrial packing polystyrene(EPS) which does.
In the 70s when these buildings were built, they had the right idea[1]: concrete boxes with a brick skin. Minimal holes between the flats, and any hole was liberally blocked with asbestos.
THe problem came when asbestos was removed, or the external walls were covered in a flammable non-encased/fire compartmentalised cladding.
"Geography" would be more valid if this was about rock formations or trade routes.
If someone says "when it comes to building codes, the UK is no longer in Europe", then everyone knows exactly what is meant. Performative misunderstanding isn't helpful.
The UK is in Europe.
The fact that we know what they mean by saying the UK is no longer in Europe does not make that statement any more correct.
I often see comments from people outside of Europe who think that the UK "left Europe" (not realising the distinction between Europe and the EU). I don't blame them, but I think it's worth pointing out.
Respectfully, I disagree that they are not realising that. They are just using language differently, i.e. "Europe" in a political / legislative context can mean "the EU", i.e. a political / legislative boundary not a geographic one.
You can say" they're wrong" if you like, but use of language is more commonly viewed as descriptive not prescriptive: "how language is actually being written and spoken rather than trying to identify a correct way"
tl;DR People know what they're saying and you understand it, so what's the issue? what I said in the 1st comment.
People can work around a lot of mistakes, it doesn't mean it's correct. If I tell you my brother speaks Mexican, you know very well I mean Spanish. Does that mean I shouldn't be corrected?
> The regulators say they thought they'd banned it.
That sounds like they're saying it is their fault.
As an example of this sort stuff, maybe you carefully define "Must not be used" in your legislation for banning materials and then you later actually write that a material "Should not be used". If a bunch of people die you can say "Actually we said very clearly that it shouldn't be used!" but if instead a bunch of companies are annoyed by how expensive it is to find an alternative you say "Actually we didn't ban it - we only used the word 'should'".
Lack of maintenance or fitting of sprinklers and firedoors was: the residents had been asking for a while, but Kensington council cares more for its richer residents, so instead what happened was plastic cladding was fitted to make the richer residents not have to have an old tower block spoil their view.
I've seen this particular point made a couple of times. Can someone explain how the cladding used affects the view from other buildings?
For a high rise building they don't take up much more space than a single stair and can play an important role in the structure of the building also.
Also devices that allow easier access to an apartment are more acceptable in Japan. In the US there is a much greater need for security oriented design.
https://milpitasbeat.com/assemblymember-alex-lee-pushes-for-...
The challenge is going to be convincing fire departments and insurance agencies that theyre safe enough to not prevent.
There's a fantastic article about the challenges here: https://www.enr.com/articles/50905-milwaukees-25-story-ascen...
tl;dr: Insurance companies might be hesitant but it's often a matter of getting the right signoffs. Change may well be on the horizon, however.
My previous appartment was in a 3-story building, and my impression was that the entire staircase was bolted together (and it was on the outside of the building).
Not turning into an oven is another feature. Heat conductivity of concrete is far lower than that of steel.
If you were to tell 20 year old me that I could save say £100-£200 on rent by taking a bit of a gamble on the fire escape then I'd be ordering climbing gear and practicing climbing out of the window with my harness.
The probability of any apartment building that I'm in catching fire and going full Grenfell is basically zero, as far as I remember it's happened one time in approx ten years in London.
I'm probably more likely to die in a crash whilst sitting on the bus.
It makes far more sense IMO to focus on reducing the flammability of objects, having fire doors, etc.
Five stories of timberframe? How is it good to have a fireproof ground floor, if you happen to live on the fifth?
70 people died in the fire.
by the time the higher floors were starting to be evacuated all of the stairwells would have been unusable
Per the article:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place. Statistically, the evidence is clear: fire-death rates are consistently lower in Europe than in the U.S. and Canada.
It's almost as if disproving this statement is the whole point of the article or something.
And completely ignores the housing shortage that's troubling almost everywhere in America.
> The argument, in short, is to re-legalize single-stair apartment buildings, also known as “point-access blocks”—a typology that was once commonplace and remains so in much of the world, including the European Union, where fireproof single-stair designs are allowed. If combined with zoning reform, such code reform would enable attractive, light-filled multifamily housing to be built cost-effectively on countless urban sites that would otherwise be developed as single-family homes.
> Single-stair egress costs lives. It shouldn't be allowed. They were right to ban them, no matter how 'ugly' or costly it makes the buildings.
Very few things have a single, simplistic effect in the complex world system.
What seems to matter are other factors, such as fire warning, fire suppression, and general fire safety knowledge. But also things like electrical systems, kitchen design, cooking methods, etc.