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Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
231–240 of 309 posts
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#232I live in a London apartment building with a single staircase, which is standard here. The difference in principle seems to relate to “what happens when there’s a fire?”. Here, we don’t need to escape if there’s a fire in the building[1], because regulations demand walls, floors and doors that can withstand many hours of fire, which provides more than enough time for the fire service to attend and extinguish the fire…
In the USA, the Sept 11 WTC collapse was another one of those "Shelter in place as deadly" incidents when "something that couldn't happen" (skyscrapers collapsing from impact/fire/{conspiracy theories go here}) did. They were "designed to withstand an airplane crash" - and, previously, other buildings had [0]. "Stay in a building that's actively on fire, don't worry, people will come and take care of it!" sounds, to…
The reason "shelter in place" is recommended is that it's the smoke that kills. People naturally fear flames but you're more likely to pass out from toxic smoke and never wake up, without ever seeing actual flame. Several stairwells don't help unless they're completely isolated from each other, which is totally unfeasible.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#233I live in a London apartment building with a single staircase, which is standard here. The difference in principle seems to relate to “what happens when there’s a fire?”. Here, we don’t need to escape if there’s a fire in the building[1], because regulations demand walls, floors and doors that can withstand many hours of fire, which provides more than enough time for the fire service to attend and extinguish the fire…
The building solidity may deal with the fire itself, but what about the smoke? How do you keep that from asphyxiating you?
That's exactly why you're not supposed to go to the stairwell. That's where the deathly smoke is. Apartment doors are spec'd to keep fire and smoke out. Plus apartment windows must be openable. Ventilation systems are designed not to circulate air between apartments.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
This page makes a claim and has links to sources at the bottom: “International Fire Death Rate statistics show no correlation between the allowable building height for residential buildings with a single egress stair and fatality rates. The U.S. NFPA attributes the worldwide trend in decreased fatality rates between 1979 and 2007 to improved in firefighting capacities, stringent regulation of combustible materials in…
Fatality rates sure, but what about injuries? People getting trampled over, falling downstairs.
Anecdotal, but I've never heard of an apartment building fire where people get trampled trying to escape. This in Europe where many if not most countries do not mandate a second escape route for midrise buildings. It's simply not a problem. You're supposed to shelter in your apartment anyway, which almost always is much safer than the hallway in case of a fire.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When you have someone deliberately setting fires and blocking the escape routes with a knife, you have bigger problems than just one stairwell. The software world is well versed in the concept of a single point of failure, and the importance of eliminating it and mitigating any chance. And yet here we are downplaying a critical design problem because it was a single point of failure?
As always, you have to balance the risk of a crazy trap-setting knifeman attack with the (opportunity) cost of building additional escape routes.
Not just the risk of a crazy trap-setting knifeman attack, but the risk of other things that are likely to block a single exit (as fire sometimes does.)
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 stairways are much harder to block than one, especially if they are at opposite ends of the structure. One person will struggle to keep them blocked. That’s a whole lot better than 1 stairwell!
Why? Lock one, go to the other, douse it with something flammable, light it. Anyway. Most of the world does not go up in flames regularly, despite having not having this regulation.
Why mitigate against fire at all? If the standard is that most of the world has to be burning for that to be practical, it'll never be practical.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
As always, you have to balance the risk of a crazy trap-setting knifeman attack with the (opportunity) cost of building additional escape routes.
Not just the risk of a crazy trap-setting knifeman attack, but the risk of other things that are likely to block a single exit (as fire sometimes does.)
Yes, but it looks like that sort of events (where additionally you have to evacuate rather than shelter inside your apartment) seem to be exceedingly rare, given that lack of a second stairwell has not been a problem at all in several Western countries.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Osaka_building_fire Good point. But to be fair, you should consider the injuries and deaths caused by elderly falling off stairs - 1M injuries, 12,000 deaths in the US alone. [0] Compared that with 3,700 deaths and 16,600 injuries for ALL fires, not just fires in buildings [1]. My view would be that stairs KILL, and that new buildings should avoid stairs (at least, within a single…
It would be far-fetched to think that having a second staircase for egress would result in additional deaths. More staircases does not cause more traversals of staircases.
Secondary staircases are often steeper to save money.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#239For people commenting that it is worth to sacrifice living space for a little bit of security: do you live in the suburbs (in order to have more space) or do you live in a smaller apartment in the city (in order to have a shorter commute)? The risk you avoid by reducing driving is much, much higher than the risk you avoid by having a second staircase in your building. People choose money/comfort over security all the…
Is it really? Based on micromort stats in the U.S., walking and biking places is way way more deadly than driving a car per km. unless you drive everywhere while living downtown (which sounds unlikely), there is gonna be some sweet spot where you need to drive but don't live too far from where you need to go.
Re: Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
#240Here's something that happened one week ago, a perfect (and sad) example of what happens when you only have one set of stairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Osaka_building_fire > The victims gasped for air and had difficulties escaping, as there was only one escape route, with the emergency stairs and elevators being located outside the clinic. > Experts were surprised by the fire's high death toll. The authorit…
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Osaka_building_fire Good point. But to be fair, you should consider the injuries and deaths caused by elderly falling off stairs - 1M injuries, 12,000 deaths in the US alone. [0] Compared that with 3,700 deaths and 16,600 injuries for ALL fires, not just fires in buildings [1]. My view would be that stairs KILL, and that new buildings should avoid stairs (at least, within a single…
Turning stairs into ramps doesn't change anything about this. The point isn't the stairs, it's the exits. We just haven't figured out how to have entrances and exits in multi-story buildings that don't involve stairs or elevators. I don't think chutes and ladders would be safer for the elderly.