I attended a conference the other day that dealt with fire behaviour research in buildings put on by the National Research Council of Canada. That is, how does fire actually behave, how do people react to fires, etc. These are my notes from just one of the sessions and even at that, it is only a fraction of the information presented. It is also condensed and reorganized. Overall the conference was very informative and interesting. Unfortunately, the formatting and the lists are a bit off because this forum is limited in its abilities.

The speaker (Guylene’ Proulx) provided the example of the nightclub fire (Great White concert) in which a video camera recorded the participant’s behaviour in the building. Note the capacity of the building slightly exceeded the limit. Almost all the people tried to exit from the doors they used to come into the building even though other exits were available. A closer exit had an illegal door swing and part of the building had a dead-end corridor, which did not come into play during the exit. Due to a changeover from a restaurant to a nightclub, they were required but did not have sprinklers in place. Pyrotechnics were used next to flammable sound foam that was installed to counter complaints from neighbours about the noise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire
Elapsed Time Event
0 Pyrotechnics activated
9 s Flame visible on wall
19 s Flame progress on wall
20 s Crowd started to react
25 s Flame at ceiling
30 s Band stopped playing
41 s Fire alarm and strobes activated
60 s Smoke at ceiling level throughout room
71 s Cameraman left by front door (One of the first out. Strangely, that cameraman from a local TV station was also a part owner of the club so he was cited in a conflict of interest charge.)
102 s Occupants piled up at the front door and could not exit.

The crowds reacted quicker than in the typical office-building scenario because they could actually see the fire and did not need to get confirmation from others that it was an emergency.

Human behaviour in a fire: Contrary to popular belief, people do not exhibit panic while responding to a fire (only 2%). In fact, people can and do exhibit altruistic behaviour. If a person trips and falls, someone will try to help them up. If a handicapped or very slow person is blocking the stairwell, people will bunch up and proceed at the speed of the slowest person. People will attempt to calm each other down.

The most common behaviour is the absence of any response before committing to an action. Once a warning has been made, people tend to seek affirmation that an event is actually happening – they talk to their neighbours, poke their head up over their desk or around the corner. People tend to want to finish phone conversations or finish typing a thought on their computers before realizing that something is happening. Then they take their time to shut down computers, gather their Blackberries, put away important files, grab their purse, put on their coats, etc. before they actually get up to leave. In a high-rise office evacuation drills, they observed that the pre-movement time to be approximately 1 minute before the occupants began to evacuate. This is in a building where people are generally prepared and practise their fire drills.

Other observations: people who live/work in the building might attempt to put out a fire but visitors to the building (especially theatres or movie house) never attempt to do so probably because of their non-familiarity with the building.

You would think that in a fire people would just go to the nearest exit. This is not necessarily true because people who are separated from their loved ones will often try to go back into a fire area to reconnect with their loved ones, especially if they are separately from their children. This creates a counter flow to the exit pattern, which bunches people up and slows the exiting process.

After the 1993 bombing in the lower levels of the World Trade Centre, the speaker was involved in analysing the exiting from the buildings and after 9/11 was also involved in interviewing the survivors. It took approx 1 minute of pre-movement time before people began to react and a minimum of 10 more minutes before people made the actual decision to leave the building whereupon it took an average of 2.5 hours to evacuate. The pre-movement times were estimated:
WTC Tower 1 (1993) 11 min. 2 sec.
WTC Tower 2 (1993) 25 min. 24 sec.
WTC Tower 1 (2001) 6 min. 0 sec.
Cook County Fire (2003) 5 min. 0 sec. (even after voice communication over speakers)
In the post-collapse of the 2001 buildings, they interviewed over 1000 people to get feedback on what the problems were in exiting the building. One of the prevalent activities was that people could feel the building shake but then took time to look around the corner, check stairwells, look out the window, smell for smoke, etc.

In an apartment building the reactions times are considerably slower. They conducted unannounced fire drills (Thursday at 1930hrs to maximize the number of people in the buildings). They found that the pre-movement time varied from 2.5 minutes to over 9 minutes but averaged 3 minutes, which is considerably longer than the office building experience. The elderly and very young took the longest to mobilize but not drastically different from able adults. It was disturbing that many people did not hear the fire alarm due to the distance from the alarm, location of the alarm was in the hallway not the suite, TV/radio noises, people talking, etc. or just plain did not recognize it as a fire alarm. The testers also had the emergency first responders show up with full gear and flashing lights to make the experience as real as they could. Part of the difference between an office building and a residential tower is that most offices have regular drills and practise leaving the building whereas they do not in residence.

Some factors that affected the response of people to an emergency:
a) Familiarity with the building especially with assembly buildings.
b) Training or lack thereof.
c) Looking at others and the need for a leader to actually start to do something.
d) Following instructions, especially from those who “look” official.
e) People tend to want to use cell phones and Blackberries while in the stairwell to contact others.
f) Evacuees who may be out of shape or overweight, wheelchair users, asthmatic people, all of which slows the ability of the masses to use the stairwell.
g) Women with high heels tend to clog up stairwells.
h) Stairwells that have incurred damage, have water or debris in them, lack signage or proper lighting will slow down the exiting process.

Recommendations:
a) Do not have exits lead to an underground garage even if the garage is a safe area that has an exit to the exterior.
b) Do not build double loaded stairwells. (Architects like to design the “building cores” to maximize rental space but by doing so, damage or cross air contamination can shut down both stairwells!)
c) People will exit from the way they came in unless they are directed to another exit by instructions or by a leader.
d) Practise fire drills in all buildings and building operators should have a fire plan in place with the necessary people to enforce it.
e) Review stairwell size and design and match with crowd densities (2.3 people/m2).
f) Put refuge areas in places other than the stairwell because stairwells (especially upper levels) gather and funnel smoke. Use protect-in-place strategies with better and more fire/smoke resistant compartments.
g) Use a refuge floor in very tall buildings.
h) Consider having a designated “safe” elevator, which has extra barriers to prevent migration of smoke and fire.
i) Civilise and smooth the merging of people from a floor into the traffic in the stairwell.
j) Change the codes to demand more use of photoluminescent marking in exit routes.
k) Use phased evacuation in tall buildings.
l) Have good clear voice communication by loudspeakers and be specific with the instructions.
m) Design for efficient movement in stairs (see above).
n) Inter-floor communication systems for fire fighter use only because often their radios cannot penetrate concrete floors and structures. (Lessons from a firefighter).
o) Leave fire extinguisher in but take out the fire hose out the building fire cabinets because occupants are taught not to use them and even if they did use them, they would not know how to fight a fire with a 1.5” hose pushing water at 60-80 psi. The fire fighters don’t trust the building hoses because they may be never be checked or stored properly so they usually bring their own. Instead, install as many standpipe attachments in the building as possible based on distances to areas. (Lessons from a firefighter).

p) Building Emergency Action Plan should have:
i. Description of the occupants.
ii. Description of the building.
iii. Description of emergencies.
iv. Actions to be taken by building management; emergency team, floor warden and occupants.

q) Train, practise the Plan, assess the plan to see if it works.

Overall, people are rational and can think for themselves. They are able to make decisions based on information available. They will attempt to preserve themselves and their loved ones. They are helpful, courageous and co-operative. They are not fire experts. They lack experience with emergencies. They will use a familiar plan of action. They will follow instructions. They are relatively cool and composed; the trauma comes after the event.

Lots of good information there for protecting yourself, orienting people of what to expect and hints on architectural design.

But you left out, or I didn't see, two of the biggies:

1) If there is a fire the vast majority of the people will seek to get out the way they got in. After action reports show that it is very common for people to move away from nearby exits, even though they were clearly marked and preferentially move toward the entrance they used to enter the building.

In the case of 'The Station' nightclub a good number of people were within a few steps of side exits but they turned around and moved toward the main entrance which was several times as far away.

Hint: in any gathering place it pays to make a tour of the available exits. It usually only takes a couple of minutes. That way when your stressed you are not focused on the one way you came in.

In malls the vast majority of stores of any size have an exit in the back that leads to daylight or a service corridor. Most people forget this. In a fire or other emergency 'the path less traveled' can be a good thing to know about.

2) If your building, buying or operating a building look into adding fire sprinklers. In terms of protecting life and property from fire there is simply no better way to start. Often for less than the cost of carpeting you can get a real leg up on fire protection.

There is little doubt that if the nightclub had had sprinklers the loss of life would have been much lower. Sprinklers buy time for people to get out and firemen to get in.

I think it was in the MGM fire that a small number of sprinkler heads a resident demanded to be installed stopped the fire after hours of firemen trying to get it under control at considerable risk to themselves.

I once arrived at a fire in a junior college dorm (female) at the same time as the fire department (actually, slightly ahead of most of them). After observing both the students and the fireguys, an old poem comes to mind:

When in trouble
When in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and shout.

No one, other than my partner and I, were even concerned to check the individual rooms to be sure that all of the occupants had exited. Instead, the fire guys, ignoring my advice/questions (after all, I was just a Chippie, while they were professionals), decided to break open the doors at the end of one wing, thereby venting the place, and within less than a minute flames were shooting 20 feet out those opened doors...

Why?

I was in a mall movie theater back east when the fire alarm went off and movie management evacuated everyone into the mall (toward the crowd/potential fire) rather than out the emergency exits that led to the parking garage and clean air. What's wrong with exiting to a garage?

Nothing "wrong" with it. It's just that it goes contrary to most people's instincts. They know that safety is outside, they don't necessarily know that the parking garage is. Logic says it should be - as it is concrete, has few combustibles (aside from the vehicles), is structurally sound and has at least one big ass exit to the outside. People in a crisis situation will default to their safest knowledge not stop and think things all the way through.

So is the recommendation to not have an exit into the garage because folks won't use it or because it's a bad idea? When the fire alarm went off my first reaction was to exit the building, not to be forced into the crowd. Seems education of mall management is needed more than changing exit locations.

There was a lot to read and easy to overlook. I could have emphasized it a bit more - see the recommendations.


Now that was a whole other lecture, actually 2 or 3. If I get the time, I will write up a bit more on that. Thanks. I could go into a bunch more into building construction in general but then I don't know if it would as appropriate for the Survival Forum.

"Now that was a whole other lecture, actually 2 or 3. If I get the time, I will write up a bit more on that. Thanks. I could go into a bunch more into building construction in general but then I don't know if it would as appropriate for the Survival Forum."

I would look forward to a lecture on fire-safe building design and sprinklers.

I think it is entirely appropriate to this forum and survival in general. Most of us spend far more time inside buildings than in mother nature. And most of us will eventually build, have built, of otherwise own a home. Most of us will spend some time in buildings used for public gatherings as owner, operator or patron.

Fighting off lions, tigers and bears (Oh my), stocking up on supplies and contemplating the coming zombie uprising doesn't cover the entire length and breadth of survival. Certainly everyone can agree that more people die in structures fires than by grizzly bear. If discussions about bear attacks is legitimate fodder for this forum I would think structures fires would be also. Of course the main man, he who must be obeyed, can call it any way he sees fit. I'm just saying...

If nothing else learning such things would give people something to look for when they go to a bar, concert, sports arena or hotel. As an example if the people had who entered "The Station" nightclub had been sensitized to the issue and known what to look for they might have noticed the danger and left before the fire started.

Knowing just a bit about sprinklers and being an advocate of their use I really think the more people learn about them the more they will support their use.

We had a near fire in our office the other week (while I was on vacation). We lost power for an extended period. After some time, someone thought to check on our marginal server room. As soon as he opened the door, he smelled "smoke", probably from a dead UPS. He made two discoveries pretty quickly: nobody knew where the fire extinguisher was and nobody had a flashlight to see what was happening inside the server room. (No emergency lighting and it's one of only three rooms without windows.)

They did eventually find an old flashlight of mine and one of the dry chemical extinguishers from the building. Good thing they didn't need to use it. We're now ordering flashlights and CO2 extinguishers that we can use without destroying every piece of equipment in the room.

But it has me thinking. It's not enough to just carry your own personal gear. If you're really going to be equipped to survive(TM) you need to help equip those around you. I should have told people that I keep a good flashlight in my desk. I should have noticed our shortage of (appropriate) extinguishers. I should have complained about our incredibly weak safety training and fire drill performance.

And YOU might be broke (trying to provide for those who don't care enough to take care of themselves), and unemployed for bringing fire safety issues to the forefront and disturbing the status quo (complacency level) in the office environment.

Step carefully my friend, the secret to success will be in your approach to this subject.