You are wise.

Four letters.


;-)

You forgot to include,

5:20pm WTC 7 collapsed. (no plane hit this building)

Structural Engineers don't consider fire risk to a buildings collapse if the building is a steel truss framed building simply because most fires would not be hot enough to weaken the steel truss frame to the point whereby it would make it collapse under its own weight. To have 3 high rise steel truss frame building collapse on a single day to fire would have been highly statistically unlikely. Even more so within an hour of the steel frames being heated by a moderately cool fire such as happened within WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7. These buildings had very large multiple safety factors (they are over engineered) inherent in their designs where they had to withstand huge wind shear forces (velocities greater than a Cat 3-4 Hurricane - the designers were aware of the Long Island Express) which were many times greater than the strength required to withstand the gravitational forces of the buildings own weight even if all the structural steel had suddenly lost half its tensile strength when structural steel is heated to beyond 600 degrees Celsius (not just a few floors). It also take a long time (many hours) to heat hundreds to thousands of tonnes of structural steel to these temperatures due to the specific heat properties of structural steel.



A steel frame building will begin to sag and buckle before it collapses from the effects of fire as described here;

http://www.sheilacasey.com/2008/06/windsor-fire-in-madrid-vs-wtc-fires-on-911.html

I listen to a police scanner thru headphones much of the day.

When we were told to evacuate the facility 5 years ago I knew that it was because of fumes from laying tile in a large building 5 miles away upwind and that the building was being re-occupied even as we were being shooed out of ours. The county reverse 911 told everyone within 5 miles to leave. So we did. Roads were clogged so badly all I could do was go around the block and back to my parking space. Walked across the street to the pizza parlor and had lunch. County was very embarrassed.

Another time I was listening to a deputy report swirling clouds in a thunderstorm over my building. Not a funnel yet but...
No PA announcement. I was the only one that had a clue.

During fire drills I listen to my Security people to see how it's going :-)

A scanner used skillfully is about your best bet.

Going to put all my things into one post.

- Most people will evacuate a building in the way they came it. Makes perfect sense. So, ask and find alternate exits.

- I always start my classes with instructions on where the fire extinguishers, first aid kids, AED's and fire exits are. If you're in a class or presentation and someone doesn't mention them, ask.

- In regarding evacuating the building, it is a real toss-up on whether to stay inside or not if you don't know what is going on. A normal fire, yes. A terrorist attack? I dunno. Could you tell the difference?

I have some degree of protection inside a building than I do fully exposed on a street. Thankfully those who are deranged wanted to make a political statement and put the planes into the buildings where the effects were isolated for a time. They didn't put their flying molotav cocktails into wide open streets where tens of thousands of unprotected people had evacuated to and were watching. If I had to choose a way to die, burning alive (whether heat or chemical), would be the last on my list. Even with all that, I'd still evacuate. Don't forget to take your jacket

- Regarding people not leaving, I'm a Fire Warden, and we've been given explicit instructions that we may disconnect any call or any network connection. In the event of wireless, we can just take the laptop with us. We are fully backed by our CEO and President. I don't think I have the power to physically remove people, but would make a note of who they are, where they are, what clothing they are wearing, so that I may report them to building security and management. I also volunteer in another city in the state, and could possibly give a "lawful order", but not sure of that. Either way, I'm not sticking around for their bad decision to hurt me.

Somehow I have trouble with using 9-11 as an example to illustrate emergency survival behaviours.

One of the problems is that 9-11 was a deliberate and severe bombing attack. That puts it into a class of its own.
The other is that any discussions I have seen about it almost immediately turn into political discussions.

However, even in the 9-11 scenario the people who left made it and those who stayed late were lost.

How the fires started, whether the buildings were knocked over by the planes or if it was all a New World Order or Illuminati plot does not really matter much.

The real point is that nobody had a clue about what was happening and that is the normal situation.
It is true on industrial sites and ships too.
So the thing to do is evacuate as soon as possible.

One thing that I have seen in the news which does worry me is the habit a lot of companies have of locking emergency exits.
I have seen that done in offices, in factories and in nightclubs.

I would also like to mention a bit more about muster points.
If they are well selected they are can be effective refuge station.
Muster points allow you to take a count of who made it out, and hopefully let you know that nobody is left that you need to go back for.
Muster points give your people a definite action plan. They know where to go and go there.
Muster points mean the people have not left work. If it is a false alarm you can get your people back to work after the situation is cleared.
Muster points have more things to recommend them but that is enough to get the idea.

Being in my line of work, I'm picky about the fire alarm system in a hotel I'm staying in. What brand, what level of detection, does it meet the spacing/height requirements for where devices are supposed to be and how they're supposed to be installed, what company installed it, etc...

But, I know what to look for, most people wouldn't. I do it everywhere I go, not just hotels either. Every building I walk into, I can glance around the room and notice every fire alarm device. I'm also quick to let the the owner/manager know if something doesn't look right.

At least part of that can be blamed on fire drills & false alarms. Standing around freezing your behind off while some twit calls roll because someone pulled the fire alarm (probably had an exam that day & hoped to get out of it) or they decided to have a drill tends to make you evaluate the situation first. Holler wolf often enough & people start to ignore you.

As a guy who knows more than 99.99% of the general public about unannounced drills and false alarms, I still GTFO when the fire alarm goes off. You only have to be wrong in your assumption that it's a false alarm once to end up dead.

Unless I'm the guy who set the alarm off, and I know for 100% certain that it's a drill or a system test, I'm headed out of the building as quickly as possible. I'm not betting my life of the possibility (no matter how great the odds) that it's not the real deal. You see the fire alarm guy heading for the door, you'd be wise to follow him.

Which works, until one day, you wake up to find yourself handicapped. Back during the NYC blackout, I shrugged, and started walking the 11 miles home. Made it 1/2 way before I got a lift

Today? I'd need to take a rest (call it a pain break) by the time I got to the ground floor, and every 3-4 blocks after, and when I got to the end of the 4 (or 11 miles), the next stop would be the ER for my leg.

I went from "overweight, but able to walk 5 miles without thinking about it too much" to the MD saying "I don't even want you walking around the supermarket - have your wife do the shopping"

Heh - one of the 3 times I've been in a burning building (yes folks, I've been in 3 building fires, and I'm NOT a fire fighter) was in High school - we were scheduled to have a fire drill at like 10:10am (right after the start of some class - whatever the actual time was) - the alarm came through like 1-2 minutes early, so the few of us who had gotten to the classroom waited for the teacher to show (like I said, we were expecting a drill) - turns out it was a real fire 3 floors up! About 2 minutes later, one of the APs came by and said "didn't you hear the alarm?" we explaine, he said it was a real fire - the 3 of us were the last out! Never saw any smoke, but the FDNY got to put out 2 burning lockers, and we all went back to class about 30 minutes later. One of those cases where fire drills gave us the exact WRONG reaction