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Coffee Break Training

Topic: Fire Escape Stairs

Learning objective: The student shall be able to explain the fundamental requirements for fire escape stairs on existing buildings.

Fire escape stairs may provide an alternate means of egress for existing buildings where the construction of new interior or exterior stairs is impractical. Fire escape stairs are not permitted on new buildings.

Generally, fire escape stairs should be made from steel or other approved non-combustible material. They should be designed to support the dead load of the stair system plus a live load of at least 100 pounds per square foot (4788 Pa).
The number and arrangements of doors and windows opening onto the fire escape must be adequate to provide easy access, but not located so a fire impinges on the stairs or on persons escaping a building.

Access to a fire escape should not pass through an intervening room, and should be directly to a balcony, landing, or platform. These should be no higher than the floor or windowsill level, and may not be more than 8 inches (205 mm) below the floor level or 18 inches (455 mm) below the windowsill.

Openings near the fire escape should be protected with approved fire door or fire window assemblies having a minimum 45-minute fire-resistance rating. The distance and arrangement of opening protectives varies by the different codes.
The fire code official is authorized to require periodic load testing to assure the fire escape stairs maintain their structural integrity.

There are differences among the model building and fire code regulations for fire escape stairs, so the inspector always should refer to the locally-adopted code in his or her jurisdiction.

For additional information, refer to NFPA 1, Uniform Fire Code®, Chapter 14; International Fire Code®, Chapter 10; International Building Code®, Chapter 34; or NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®, Chapter 7.

As part of the process through which NFPA staff provides answers to technical questions received from members and AHJs, one stakeholder recently asked about compliance rates for fire door assemblies inspected yearly, as required by NFPA 80, Standard for Fire Doors and Other Opening Protectives. I took the question to mean: “What percentage of fire door assemblies fail the required yearly inspection?”

In my mind, the inquiry asks the wrong question; even if I had the statistics requested, providing them would not be helpful. A fire door assembly can fail the inspection if any of scores of elements/features have anything wrong with them. The failure of some of those features should carry a heavier weight than others, but they don’t; a violation is a violation; any violation fails the fire door assembly. Thus, we are hearing fire door assembly inspectors say things like ___% fail the inspection (I’m leaving it to others to fill in the blank, but I’m often hearing numbers as high as 50, 60, 70, or even 80 percent).

Consider three examples of violations that have differing importance:

Some metal plates for attaching the arms of a hydraulic door closer to the top jamb/soffit are fabricated with five pre-drilled holes for the passage of screws for attaching the plate; very often one of those holes does not have a fastener; a missing fastener is a violation; such violation fails the fire door assembly. The deficiency can be repaired, almost immediately, using readily available tools, like a drill and screwdriver, and readily available parts, like screws matching those provided by the manufacturer of the closing device. The repair takes almost no time and can be performed without disassembling the fire door. The door assembly can then be removed from the failures portion of the report or, perhaps, not added to the failures report in the first place, especially if the facility performs a pre-inspection prior to the required yearly inspection or has an effective on-going maintenance program.
A door leaf has sagged, within its frame, such that the clearance is excessive between the top edge of the latch stile and the rabbet at the top of the frame. Relatedly, the clearance is excessive between the upper portion of the edge of the hinge stile and the rabbet at the side of the frame. The clearance violations can be corrected by installing steel shims behind portions of one or more of the hinges. Effective shimming takes considerable skill; the facility has no one on staff who can successfully accomplish the needed shimming; a professional will be brought in to perform the work. The violation cannot be immediately corrected; such condition must be reported as a failure. Had the facility performed a pre-inspection or had an effective on-going maintenance program, the condition could have been noted earlier and corrective action taken so the door would pass the required yearly inspection.
A fire door assembly has a door leaf that is so warped that the door leaf face is not in alignment with the face of the door frame, meaning that some portion of the latch stile doesn’t contact the stops built into the frame. The gaps are noticeable and, obviously, the fire door assembly will not prevent fire from getting to the unexposed side. The door leaf, at minimum, and perhaps the door frame, must be replaced. Based on availability of a door leaf that meets the facility’s needs, the violation might not be able to be corrected for days or weeks. Such condition must be reported as a failure on the inspection report. Remedial action must commence immediately.

Rather than asking for a statistical report of the overall failure rate of fire door assemblies inspected, a more useful request might be: What percent of the fire door assemblies in a facility would fail a re-inspection conducted a few days after the initial inspection? This would help weed out the noise created by minor violations in contrast with violations that your gut feeling tells you might keep the fire door assembly from performing as intended under fire conditions.

Such question could help to ensure that inspection reports get utilized immediately to commence remedial action, especially for minor issues that might have been avoided by an effective maintenance program or if pre-inspections had been conducted. Where a facility ignores the inspection report and does not immediately correct the violations that are easy to correct, all violations will be considered to carry equal weight. Together, the violations might place the facility into serious non-compliance.

Source: Ron Cote Blog Post on Feb 1, 2018 via NFPA | Xchange™

The Great Escape

Fayola Powell Feb 06, 2018

An orange colored fire escape chute in a white background.

The traditional way of evacuating buildings during emergencies can be very problematic; limited exits, panicked people stampeding, etc. Many lives can be lost while people are overwhelmed by the overarching emotions of fear, anxiety, and confusion. In the early 1800s, French inventor M. Daujon developed an invention to make the process of evacuating buildings faster and more efficient. He patented the cloth chute, which was made with strong cloth about 22 meters long and 2 meters wide, and fastened to a window with a wooden bar and straps. He conducted an experiment in Geneva, Switzerland in which 22 people used the chute to escape from a building’s fourth story in one minute and fifty seconds. Most would agree that this new mode of escaping is very swift, and beats tripping down flights of stairs or tumbling down rickety fire escape steps. However, Daujon’s invention proved to be more of a novelty back in the 1800s and wasn’t widely used until the 1970s with the advent of high-performance fabrics.

Three designs are commonly used today. The first is Hooper’s evacuation chute, which is a tube that’s attached to the side of buildings and drops straight down. The second is a chute that’s anchored at an angle to a building. And the third is an interior spiraling tube-like structure attached to the side or between buildings. Evacuation chutes are generally used in industries where life-threatening emergencies are more likely to occur, e.g., oil and gas, mining, etc.

A Korean company has begun marketing a personal elevator-style fire escape system that carries people one or two at a time in stages down the exterior of a building and requires no electricity.

“Neri-Go”, by Asia Fire Protection, is intended for tall buildings and takes up no space inside.

In the event of fire, residents step onto a 60-cm-sq platform and release a brake to be lowered to the next level, where they step onto another.

The controlled descent is driven by the user's weight, and when the user steps off it rises automatically for the next evacuee.

According to the BuyKorea website, it can accommodate those carrying children as well as the disabled.

Emergency evacuation from tall buildings has become an urgent question around the world following the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK in June, in which 71 people lost their lives after becoming trapped in a building that had only one staircase.

In that case, however, flames shot up the exterior of the building, which would have made Neri-Go unusable on the affected elevations.

Image: The Neri-Go system in actions (Asia Fire Protection)
Source: Global Construction Review | 1 December 2017 | By GCR Staff

Further Reading: New Fire Escape Design in the Making: Evacuation Elevators By Gabe Escapes, National Fire Escape Association™ published November 29, 2017.

New Fire Escape Design in the Making: Evacuation Elevators

By Gabe Escapes, National Fire Escape Association™ published November 29, 2017.

With the many advancements in the realm of fire protection, it comes to no surprise that the latest fire and life safety technology comes in the form of evacuation elevators for exterior balconies and stairways complete to grade. For many high-rise buildings, it's the next big thing. Traditional old fire escapes are a thing of the past, as this new design promises to evacuate occupants at faster rates than ever before due to its design.

While still in its early stages of development, the evacuation elevator continues to receive international praise by many concerned stakeholders who in essence hope to one day be able to install them at many of the high-rise buildings they manage across the globe.

Developed by a Korean company called Negiro, the evacuation elevator is designed for use for fires or other natural disasters where rapid escapes are critical for occupant safety and survival. Technically, when stairwells are unavailable or unsuitable for use during an emergency, occupants and patrons will have another shot to save their life as a new option to escape and reach safety has been developed.

So what exactly is the difference between fire escapes and evacuation elevators? While, being uniquely similar, traditional fire escapes are typically constructed with materials that are meant to stay in fixed positions for its entire lifespan as to guarantee structural integrity and stability when used with the exception of cantilevers and accordion ladders. This new design in the other hand, is powered by hydraulics and designed to work under power outages if needed.

Source: Cheddar & Nerigo Company

INSIDE NFPA NEWS
Volume 21 - Number 10

Remote Inspections
On the heels of a white paper written and presented by the Building Code Development Committee and a recent article in the NFPA Journal, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standards Council is in receipt of a New Project Initiation Request for the development of an ANSI Accredited Standard to establish protocols and practices for the use of remote inspections of existing buildings, buildings under construction, and building systems for code compliance. Technologies for remote inspections include video, photographs, data submission, and other technologies as they become available. The standards are envisioned to be utilized/adopted by jurisdictions seeking to increase efficiencies, cost, time and resources required for inspections while improving safety for inspectors performing inspection duties. If standards development is approved by the Standards Council, the standard may additionally call for effective contamination control of other foreign matter residue.

NFPA is currently soliciting comments to gauge whether support exists for standards development addressing remote inspections of existing buildings, buildings under construction, and building systems. NFPA specifically seeks input on the following:

1. Are you, or your organization, in favor of the development of a new standard establishing protocol and practices for remote inspections of existing buildings, buildings under construction, and building systems?

2. Please state your reason(s) for supporting or opposing such standards development.

3. Are you or your organization interested in applying for membership on the Technical Committee if standards development is approved by the Standards Council? If yes, please submit an application, in addition to your comments in support of the project, online at: Submit online application*

*Note: Applications being accepted for purposes of documenting applicant interest in committee participation. Acceptance of applications by NFPA does not guaranty or imply the Standards Council will ultimately approve standards development activity on this proposed subject matter.

Please submit all comments, in support or opposition, to standards development for remote inspections as describe, by December 15, 2017 at: stds_admin@nfpa.org

“Every Second Counts: Plan Two Ways Out,” is the theme for this year’s Fire Protection Week, which will be held October 8–14.

According to a recent NFPA survey, nearly half of all Americans have not developed a home fire escape plan, and do not practice one regularly. Evidence suggests, however, that planning and practice can mean the difference between life and death in a home fire. “Every Second Counts: Plan Two Ways Out” will not only seek to teach the public what a home escape plan entails, but also about how quickly home fires can spread and how little time residents have to escape safely. “People tend to think they have more time to escape a home fire than they actually do, and that over-confidence may play a role in why some people don’t develop a home escape plan or practice it regularly,” said Lorraine Carli, NFPA vice president for Outreach and Advocacy.

More information about Fire Prevention Week and this year’s campaign can be found online at the FirePreventionWeek.org website.