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I 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

I 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. My building specifically asks residents to shelter in place. If a fire in my neighbours apartment meant I needed to escape, certainly an extra egress point would be nice, but the solution to that problem seems to be… better fire isolation. [1] The grenfell disaster (mentioned by the article) was so deadly because people sheltered in place as instructed… but that building had been modified without following regulations.

Syonyk 5y ago
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 me as an American, like utter insanity. If the building is capable of withstanding it and the correct techniques are applied quickly, great, but "not in the building" is my strongly preferred place to be in the event of any sort of structure fire/damage/etc. It's not that it can't work - it's just that when something major has gone wrong, history tends to show that lots of other things end up going wrong as well. Also, that "The building as designed" and "The building as built, after 40-50 years in service," frequently don't share as much as one might hope in terms of safety features. There's a long recorded history of structure fires that have destroyed supposedly "fireproof" buildings. We might know more now, but in a battle between Murphy and engineering hubris, Murphy seems to find a lot of ways to win. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-25_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-2...
- afirement 5y ago
  I understand the point you're making but it doesn't consider that fire safety is made up of layers, including (but not limited to) construction, equipment, policy and response. "Ah shit my building is on fire, I better run" makes so many assumptions that it cannot be considered a meaningful fire safety strategy. For example, what if I am asleep? what if I am deaf? what if I cannot walk? Certainly, there's disasters where multiple catastrophic failures result in horrific outcomes, but if we design policy around "absolute safety is impossible, so run" then we'll be less safe and more anxious. The safest buildings are big well-managed apartment buildings with shelter in place policies, because robust strategies that have been implemented from the ground-up are always going to beat half-baked strategies implemented based on an approximate understanding of single family home building regulations. As glib as it is to acknowledge, apartment buildings are so safe because safety is built on the back of loss. I am benefiting from the lessons learned from every disaster that has come before.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Response was the first thing that came to mind reading your initial post. I bet you have a full-time fire service close by your building. 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. I can think of several multistory apartment buildings that I know are in volunteer fire department districts off the top of my head. And it’s not like I memorize fire districts.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Volunteer firefighters live in rural areas and mostly serve farm and shall towns. Every suburb I've lived in has full time firefighters. Most people live in cities and suburbs not rural areas.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        There are about as many people in rural areas with volunteer fire departments as there are people in non-rural areas with volunteer fire departments. 17% of the US lives in a rural area. 32% of the US population is covered by a volunteer fire department. There are plenty of suburbs with VFDs, often lower-income. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Emergency-Responders/US-fire-department-profile https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  I’d probably choose unfenced home swimming pools, driving laws, pollution and guns to fix before building fire codes, if we’re looking at “things that seem to be insanity”.
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    When the topic is "Why doesn't the US do stairwells like other countries?" and the answer is almost entirely "Fire codes prohibit it for the following list of mass-casualty fire deaths due to stairwell behaviors in fire," the rest of those things seem rather off topic.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Eh, the topic is broad. The real question is: where does it make sense for society to put resources to prevent premature death? One option is staircases (aimed at reducing mass casualty events in fires). There are other options to improve fire safety. There are other options to improve safety in other circumstances. Perhaps with the costs of second staircases, there are things we could do to buildings for less money that would save more lives from fire. Should we do both? Just the cheaper one? Neither? How do we decide which ones are justified for their cost, and which ones aren't? Who should bear these costs? What things should be grandfathered and have a slow transition towards higher safety? What things should be immediately improved? The answer to the staircase question comes down to how we answer questions like this. And the fact that we may be tolerating much bigger risks is definitely an interesting point.
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      Yet they seem hell bent on making houses from a cardboard and other extremely flammable materials.
    - lazyasciiart 5y ago
      But that’s not what the topic was - it became “safety rules that should exist because not doing so is clearly insane even to a non-expert”.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  >Shelter in place as deadly Similarly, the standard instruction for earthquakes is "stop drop and hold", since the advice has to be fully general, covering all people in all circumstances, including highrises where evacuation is not possible. But I live in the ground floor of a not particularly well-built four story apartment building; my desk is eight feet away from an outside door. If there's an earthquake, I'm leaving!
  - lcpriest 5y ago
    I’ve lived and worked in very earthquake prone cities (Wellington, NZ). One of the reasons given to stay inside is that in certain areas of the city, shattered glass falling from sky scrapers would fill the street up to a meter deep along Lambton Quay.
  - Someone 5y ago
    That may not be the best idea. Certainly, if the earthquake is strong enough to put you in danger on the ground floor, objects can and likely will fall down from those four stories while you’re exiting the building.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    The first time an earthquake woke me up, I was out of bed, down 14 flights, and out in the street within a couple of minutes. The stairs were open-air so maybe the building didn't qualify as "high-rise". I don't think I erred, although maybe my neighbors who took a half hour to reach the street did? I guess they were looking for shoes... ISTM "the standard instruction" would be useful in a very narrow set of circumstances. Obviously it would be useless if the building completely collapses killing everyone, whether immediately or after half an hour. It wouldn't be any better than any other procedure if the building remains intact. The only circumstance in which it would save lives would be when the building immediately collapses enough to kill people in stairwells but not in apartments, and safety crews can be counted on to extract people from the wreckage. That seems pretty minor compared to the obvious advantages of immediate evacuation.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  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.
ineedasername 5y ago
The building solidity may deal with the fire itself, but what about the smoke? How do you keep that from asphyxiating you?
- Sharlin 5y ago
  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.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Seems like smart design, though two stairwells still seems useful too? But if the strategy is huddle in place and smoke-sealed doors, maybe not. But I have A question from your PoV as a resident if London w/ more "on the ground knowledge" outside of normal media reports: What happened with Grenfell tower to go so wrong?
pessimizer 5y ago
Is better fire isolation obviously cheaper than a second staircase? Depending on the footprint of the building, it actually sounds a lot more expensive.

Syonyk 5y ago

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 me as an American, like utter insanity. If the building is capable of withstanding it and the correct techniques are applied quickly, great, but "not in the building" is my strongly preferred place to be in the event of any sort of structure fire/damage/etc. It's not that it can't work - it's just that when something major has gone wrong, history tends to show that lots of other things end up going wrong as well. Also, that "The building as designed" and "The building as built, after 40-50 years in service," frequently don't share as much as one might hope in terms of safety features. There's a long recorded history of structure fires that have destroyed supposedly "fireproof" buildings. We might know more now, but in a battle between Murphy and engineering hubris, Murphy seems to find a lot of ways to win. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-25_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-2...

afirement 5y ago
I understand the point you're making but it doesn't consider that fire safety is made up of layers, including (but not limited to) construction, equipment, policy and response. "Ah shit my building is on fire, I better run" makes so many assumptions that it cannot be considered a meaningful fire safety strategy. For example, what if I am asleep? what if I am deaf? what if I cannot walk? Certainly, there's disasters where multiple catastrophic failures result in horrific outcomes, but if we design policy around "absolute safety is impossible, so run" then we'll be less safe and more anxious. The safest buildings are big well-managed apartment buildings with shelter in place policies, because robust strategies that have been implemented from the ground-up are always going to beat half-baked strategies implemented based on an approximate understanding of single family home building regulations. As glib as it is to acknowledge, apartment buildings are so safe because safety is built on the back of loss. I am benefiting from the lessons learned from every disaster that has come before.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Response was the first thing that came to mind reading your initial post. I bet you have a full-time fire service close by your building. 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. I can think of several multistory apartment buildings that I know are in volunteer fire department districts off the top of my head. And it’s not like I memorize fire districts.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Volunteer firefighters live in rural areas and mostly serve farm and shall towns. Every suburb I've lived in has full time firefighters. Most people live in cities and suburbs not rural areas.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      There are about as many people in rural areas with volunteer fire departments as there are people in non-rural areas with volunteer fire departments. 17% of the US lives in a rural area. 32% of the US population is covered by a volunteer fire department. There are plenty of suburbs with VFDs, often lower-income. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Emergency-Responders/US-fire-department-profile https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...
lazyasciiart 5y ago
I’d probably choose unfenced home swimming pools, driving laws, pollution and guns to fix before building fire codes, if we’re looking at “things that seem to be insanity”.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  When the topic is "Why doesn't the US do stairwells like other countries?" and the answer is almost entirely "Fire codes prohibit it for the following list of mass-casualty fire deaths due to stairwell behaviors in fire," the rest of those things seem rather off topic.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Eh, the topic is broad. The real question is: where does it make sense for society to put resources to prevent premature death? One option is staircases (aimed at reducing mass casualty events in fires). There are other options to improve fire safety. There are other options to improve safety in other circumstances. Perhaps with the costs of second staircases, there are things we could do to buildings for less money that would save more lives from fire. Should we do both? Just the cheaper one? Neither? How do we decide which ones are justified for their cost, and which ones aren't? Who should bear these costs? What things should be grandfathered and have a slow transition towards higher safety? What things should be immediately improved? The answer to the staircase question comes down to how we answer questions like this. And the fact that we may be tolerating much bigger risks is definitely an interesting point.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Yet they seem hell bent on making houses from a cardboard and other extremely flammable materials.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    But that’s not what the topic was - it became “safety rules that should exist because not doing so is clearly insane even to a non-expert”.
sbierwagen 5y ago
>Shelter in place as deadly Similarly, the standard instruction for earthquakes is "stop drop and hold", since the advice has to be fully general, covering all people in all circumstances, including highrises where evacuation is not possible. But I live in the ground floor of a not particularly well-built four story apartment building; my desk is eight feet away from an outside door. If there's an earthquake, I'm leaving!
- lcpriest 5y ago
  I’ve lived and worked in very earthquake prone cities (Wellington, NZ). One of the reasons given to stay inside is that in certain areas of the city, shattered glass falling from sky scrapers would fill the street up to a meter deep along Lambton Quay.
- Someone 5y ago
  That may not be the best idea. Certainly, if the earthquake is strong enough to put you in danger on the ground floor, objects can and likely will fall down from those four stories while you’re exiting the building.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  The first time an earthquake woke me up, I was out of bed, down 14 flights, and out in the street within a couple of minutes. The stairs were open-air so maybe the building didn't qualify as "high-rise". I don't think I erred, although maybe my neighbors who took a half hour to reach the street did? I guess they were looking for shoes... ISTM "the standard instruction" would be useful in a very narrow set of circumstances. Obviously it would be useless if the building completely collapses killing everyone, whether immediately or after half an hour. It wouldn't be any better than any other procedure if the building remains intact. The only circumstance in which it would save lives would be when the building immediately collapses enough to kill people in stairwells but not in apartments, and safety crews can be counted on to extract people from the wreckage. That seems pretty minor compared to the obvious advantages of immediate evacuation.
Sharlin 5y ago
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.

ineedasername 5y ago

The building solidity may deal with the fire itself, but what about the smoke? How do you keep that from asphyxiating you?

Sharlin 5y ago
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.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Seems like smart design, though two stairwells still seems useful too? But if the strategy is huddle in place and smoke-sealed doors, maybe not. But I have A question from your PoV as a resident if London w/ more "on the ground knowledge" outside of normal media reports: What happened with Grenfell tower to go so wrong?

pessimizer 5y ago

Is better fire isolation obviously cheaper than a second staircase? Depending on the footprint of the building, it actually sounds a lot more expensive.