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Topic: Another fatal night club fire |
Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 30 Mar 2003 10:07 am |
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I was talking about the fire at the club in Rhode Island and was told that around 1945, 500 people died in a similar fire in Boston. At the time, it was determined that the reason so many people dies was that the doors to the club opened INWARD, so that people who were trying to get out were in fact pushing against them and preventing them from being opened.
I don't know wheter or the same situation occurred in the recent fire. I see to recall somebody writing that it did.
The lesson here is obvious. All doors to these kinds of public buildings have to open outward. No exceptions. Older buildings must be retrofitted. it doesn't matter what it costs, or how unattractive the building may look.
No exception, no exemptions. We need a policy of zero tolerance for potentially deadly safety violations. |
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Stephen Gambrell
From:
Over there
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Posted 30 Mar 2003 10:18 am
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| And prosecution of those who violate safety regulations. |
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Kenny Yates
From:
Hattiesburg Mississippi
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Posted 30 Mar 2003 5:58 pm
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| But then someone would park their car against the door from the outside and everybody would be trapped inside....no way to win. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 31 Mar 2003 7:44 am
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I worked for years for a company that installed automatic doors like you see at your supermarket.
In California, it is law that all doors to exit a building do have to open out for the very reason this topic is about. It is also law that they have to have a certain amount of door area (# of doors, size, etc) relative to the size of the building for emergency exit.
Another thing I find apalling (sp?) is when you go up to a building that may have a set of two doors together and they lock one of them so you can only use one. Most don't have "panic bars on them so that in an emegency, people can exit though the locked door also. Again, this is against state fire codes here in California, or at least in northern California which was our business area.
It really is a shame.
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Carter D10 9p/10k
Richard Sinkler
[This message was edited by Richard Sinkler on 31 March 2003 at 07:46 AM.] |
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Mike Perlowin
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 31 Mar 2003 9:24 am
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I think that any public building that does not have doors that open outward and panic bars should be closed until kit's retrofitted.
Like I said before, no exception, no exemptions.
There WILL be more fires in clubs and restaurants. It's inevitable. We need to do everything we can to see that nobody dies when these fires occur. |
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Gene Jones
From:
Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)
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Posted 31 Mar 2003 3:44 pm
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As a former Fire Department Inspector responsible for code enforcement, I found the worst and the most dangerous violations of locked exit doors to be in our school gyms during sporting events....a much higher life-loss potential than most clubs.
Next time you go to a basketball game at your school take notice of the chains around the panic hardware on all the exit doors, and then try to envision all those people attending the game trying to get out through the main entrance in a fire emergency! They do it to keep kids from letting others in without paying admission!  www.genejones.com |
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