Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europe is also where Grenfell Towers happened.
A lot of people from the UK would differ on your description of their country.
1066
Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
41–50 of 95 posts
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#42It'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…
> 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.
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#43I 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.
How would a second stairwell would have helped Grenfell Towers? Residents were told to not evacuate for two hours after the fire started.
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
On its own? Sure. But they are rarely found in a vacuum. 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 E…
Sure, Europe's requirements save more lives than the US's overall. But we should take the best of both rather than abandoning the good parts of US standards. Saying we should stop having multiple paths of egress because more fire-resistant buildings save more lives is like saying we should stop having air bags because seat belts save more lives.
Nobody said we should stop using a single form except the person I was replying to, who suggested that single-stair egress should never be used:
> 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.
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europe is also where Grenfell Towers happened.
How would a second stairwell would have helped Grenfell Towers? Residents were told to not evacuate for two hours after the fire started.
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.
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#46Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would a second stairwell would have helped Grenfell Towers? Residents were told to not evacuate for two hours after the fire started.
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.
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#48My 30+ story building has two concrete stairwells wrapped around each other, which seems like a super efficient way to achieve the current legislation
These ('scissor stairs') are an important part of the discussion here. They are allowed (or counted as two separate means of exit) in New York, Australia, Vancouver, etc. but not permitted (or counted as one means of exit) in most of the rest of the USA, the UK, etc. 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 you can feasibly climb over the rail at certain places to reach the other stair, which could be useful in the event of multiple blockages, and adds interest to action movies.
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#49I suspect the 6 story and shorter buildings will end up having an alternative design where the stairwell and possibly certain walls are concrete, poured around the same time as the foundation, but the remaining structure is engineered timber. The challenge is going to be convincing fire departments and insurance agencies that theyre safe enough to not prevent.
Would metal stairwells be too costly? Seems to me like it might be an easier construction job (especially with some standardized heights)
Re: Exit Strategy: The Case for Single-Stair Egress
#50It'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…
I live in a former yugoslav socialist building, and our external walls are made from reinforced concrete. Our internal walls are reinforced concrete. Our bathroom walls are reinforced concrete. Drilling a hole to pull a network cable from one room to another is a pain. 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…
This fire in Geneva proves your point: https://youtu.be/7qG67b4smb8?feature=shared
That is a colossal amount of heat delivered to the surrounding units, and still no propagation.