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Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

architecturalrecord.com

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Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#51

Post by tialaramex »

craigmcnamara wrote: post #47
TylerE wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying it would, but a major part of it was supposed safer materials actually being really really unsafe and basically going up like kindling.

The decorative cyan colored cladding had quite a bit to do with what caused that fire to go our of control with a bonus of cyanide gas when combusted. The cladding left a space between the building that carried the fire up the side of the building like a chimney.

Right, but as you can see in the resulting buck passing, everybody says it wasn't their fault that this obviously unsuitable material was used. The people who made it said they hadn't intended it to be for these high rise buildings (if you clad my building in this stuff it would look ugly but the fire danger isn't significant because the building isn't very tall). The people who chose it said it passed fire regulations and so as far as they knew it was OK. The people who installed it say that some third party told them this was OK. The regulators say they thought they'd banned it. Nobody wants to admit "We didn't care that probably poor people will die, we were focused on $$$"

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#52

Post by soco »

tialaramex wrote: post #51
craigmcnamara wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decorative cyan colored cladding had quite a bit to do with what caused that fire to go our of control with a bonus of cyanide gas when combusted. The cladding left a space between the building that carried the fire up the side of the building like a chimney.

Right, but as you can see in the resulting buck passing, everybody says it wasn't their fault that this obviously unsuitable material was used. The people who made it said they hadn't intended it to be for these high rise buildings (if you clad my building in this stuff it would look ugly but the fire danger isn't significant because the building isn't very tall). The people who chose it said it passed fire regulatio…

Whis is only reinforcing the argument that a second stair might have never been built anyway, and even if yes the folks would have been just as stuck there so just as dead.

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#54

Post by stuaxo »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #14

It's a thought-provoking article. I have mixed feelings about the idea: on one hand, visiting a friend's Weimar-era home in the DDR side of Berlin really impressed me. It was slightly different from those depicted in the article (it was part of a longer row of connected buildings), but the green space afforded by the courtyard was wonderful and the opportunities for community building palpable. Yet, on the other hand…

In Grenfel, the building itself won't have been particularly combustible in the first instance, but the cladding - being plastic most certainly was.

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.

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#55

Post by stuaxo »

TylerE wrote: post #31
aeturnum wrote: post #29

I liked this youtube video that covers the same topic[1]. The US focusing entirely on this strategy to increase fire safety seems obviously stupid to me. As people say in other comments here - Europe and other countries require better fire suppression measures and materials instead of particular egress options. An obvious improvement would be to allow builders to use any combination of these approaches to achieve a m…

Europe is also where Grenfell Towers happened.

The tower itself is concrete, so the building itself wasn't the problem.

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.

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#57

Post by HPsquared »

tialaramex wrote: post #51
craigmcnamara wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decorative cyan colored cladding had quite a bit to do with what caused that fire to go our of control with a bonus of cyanide gas when combusted. The cladding left a space between the building that carried the fire up the side of the building like a chimney.

Right, but as you can see in the resulting buck passing, everybody says it wasn't their fault that this obviously unsuitable material was used. The people who made it said they hadn't intended it to be for these high rise buildings (if you clad my building in this stuff it would look ugly but the fire danger isn't significant because the building isn't very tall). The people who chose it said it passed fire regulatio…

The recent Boeing incidents are similar. Too many subcontractors diluting accountability.

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#58

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #35
coryrc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people from the UK would differ on your description of their country.

Only the ones who are bad at geography :)

It depends on if your definition of "Europe" is purely geographic or it has a political dimension (EU vs not). In the context of building safety regulation and the UK's laxness at that, the political interpretation is definitely valid.

"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.

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#59

Post by shawabawa3 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #53

Grenfell Tower had just 1 stairwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire 70 people died in the fire.

I don't think a second stairwell would have helped at all

by the time the higher floors were starting to be evacuated all of the stairwells would have been unusable

Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress

#60

Post by thaumasiotes »

giantg2 wrote: post #42
jltsiren wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction? 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 w…

"What I found was that fire deaths that could have been prevented by a second staircase are extremely rare." 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.

> 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.

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