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I don't understand. I live in a three-story apartment building in San Francisco that has about 20 units (ground floor is retail space, the upper two floors have

I don't understand. I live in a three-story apartment building in San Francisco that has about 20 units (ground floor is retail space, the upper two floors have 10 apartment units each). There's a single entrance and stairwell in my building. However my building also has two fire escapes (one of which is accessible via the hallway, I think the other fire escape is only accessible by certain apartment units) and an additional wooden staircase in the back that leads to the garbage area. I don't know all the zoning laws, but this is an extremely common layout in SF. My building, like many many other buildings in the city, was built in 1906 after the earthquake, and all of the building built in this time period have a very similar style and layout.

astrange 4y ago
It's very common, especially in places like SF, for all the old buildings and neighborhoods that people actually like to be illegal to build if they were new. Of course, in SF it's practically illegal to build anything under any circumstances if any of your neighbors decide they don't like it.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
According to the article, it's buildings with 2-4 units per floor that are significantly impacted by this rule. At 10 per floor, your building is a lot larger than the ones the article is talking about.
jaclaz 4y ago
In the case of a fire where all apartments are occupied (each by two people on average) in your SF apartment, you have in theory 40 people/2 stairs= 20 people each (though it is more likely that there is a "main" stairwell, so that will take - say - 28 people and the other one 12. In a small multi-apartment block, up to 10-12 apartments (5/6 on 2 floors or 2/3 on 4-5 floors) the single stairs/fire exit will be used by the same amount of people or less. If you prefer, if you graph it, the function of number of stairs per block depends on number of apartments and the points are: 1=1 2=2 3=2 4=2 5=2 ... what the author is saying is that the step at 2 apartments is too low, compared to what are the norms in other countries and that these countries have not worse records, statistically, for deaths in fires. This latter is debatable, as there are so many factors involved such as efficiency of rescue/fire services, type of construction (materials used), height of rooms, sizes of windows, number of floors of the "average" building in any given country (and even local situations, city by city) that it is difficult to do a sensible comparison.

astrange 4y ago

It's very common, especially in places like SF, for all the old buildings and neighborhoods that people actually like to be illegal to build if they were new. Of course, in SF it's practically illegal to build anything under any circumstances if any of your neighbors decide they don't like it.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

According to the article, it's buildings with 2-4 units per floor that are significantly impacted by this rule. At 10 per floor, your building is a lot larger than the ones the article is talking about.

jaclaz 4y ago

In the case of a fire where all apartments are occupied (each by two people on average) in your SF apartment, you have in theory 40 people/2 stairs= 20 people each (though it is more likely that there is a "main" stairwell, so that will take - say - 28 people and the other one 12. In a small multi-apartment block, up to 10-12 apartments (5/6 on 2 floors or 2/3 on 4-5 floors) the single stairs/fire exit will be used by the same amount of people or less. If you prefer, if you graph it, the function of number of stairs per block depends on number of apartments and the points are: 1=1 2=2 3=2 4=2 5=2 ... what the author is saying is that the step at 2 apartments is too low, compared to what are the norms in other countries and that these countries have not worse records, statistically, for deaths in fires. This latter is debatable, as there are so many factors involved such as efficiency of rescue/fire services, type of construction (materials used), height of rooms, sizes of windows, number of floors of the "average" building in any given country (and even local situations, city by city) that it is difficult to do a sensible comparison.