It's a thought-provoking article. I have mixed feelings about the idea: on one hand, visiting a friend's Weimar-era home in the DDR side of Berlin really impressed me. It was slightly different from those depicted in the article (it was part of a longer row of connected buildings), but the green space afforded by the courtyard was wonderful and the opportunities for community building palpable.
Yet, on the other hand, the safety doctrine unnerves me:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place.
Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction? The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature, I can't see people being comfortable with the 'stay in your room' safety advice after this kind of event. People are going to follow their instincts and head for the stairs, and things are not going to be pleasant if there's A: only one and B: it's blocked.
One idea that comes to mind is building entirely fire-resistant steel and glass bridges between medium high-rise buildings. If you're too high up to use the emergency out-door stairs, but the (single) interior staircase is blocked, you could move sideways to your neighbours. Security and privacy concerns about having easy access to neighbouring properties could be mitigated by having safety-glass dividing doors with emergency hammers next to the lock. The lock could itself be opened by mutual agreement of both sides in non-emergencies.
> Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction?
If your goal is to save lives, there are other things you can regulate that are orders of magnitude more cost-effective. Where the expected price of each saved life is just millions instead of billions.
When there was another discussion on this topic a while ago, I spent some time reading about fire deaths in Finland. Finland is a country with more fire deaths per capita than most Western countries. Partly due to attitudes, and partly because of the prevalence of saunas, which are almost as big fire hazards as kitchens.
What I found was that fire deaths that could have been prevented by a second staircase are extremely rare. When people die in a fire in an apartment building, it's almost always in the unit the fire started. Either the people didn't notice it quickly enough, or the fire blocked the front door.
"What I found was that fire deaths that could have been prevented by a second staircase are extremely rare."
I agree. At least in my limited experience, it seems a lot of the deaths in the US are related to either intoxication or sleeping. In these states, it's common for the person to have never even been aware of the danger.
Yup. When I last looked into it the overwhelming amount of fire deaths were squatters lighting fires in derelict homes, and were not in a state of mind to escape.
Better homeless shelter policies & mental health support would be wildly more effective at preventing fire deaths than code enforcement.
> At least in my limited experience, it seems a lot of the deaths in the US are related to either intoxication or sleeping. In these states, it's common for the person to have never even been aware of the danger.
That won't work as evidence that US fire policies aren't helping. You need data from somewhere where those policies aren't in place, like presumably Finland.
So you wan…. What? Data on the number of fires that resulted in people dying in their sleep and therefore would not have benefitted from multiple egresses?
The data you are looking for literally does not exist. That’s not something people closely monitor.
I'm just saying that the tend the other person saw in Finland has logical support here. It can be evidence of how effective a policy is for specific scenarios (models). If someone is is not alert to the danger, then the means of escape are logically moot in those situations.
Policies that would help save lives are sprinklers in all houses. This policy is controversial due to the cost and maintenance involved. But the very scenario that has brought this about was a Maryland politician's son burnt down his house and died while passed out drunk. Now that state has a law requiring sprinklers.
> I'm just saying that the tend the other person saw in Finland has logical support here. It can be evidence of how effective a policy is for specific scenarios (models). If someone is is not alert to the danger, then the means of escape are logically moot in those situations.
No, you didn't identify any logical support. If the American policy ensures that people who are aware of the danger always survive, then (a) that is what the policy is supposed to do, and (b) it will guarantee that American fire deaths all happen to people who were not aware of the danger.
Given that, if the policy worked as advertised, it would guarantee exactly the observation that you see, it cannot be the case that this observation is evidence against the effectiveness of the policy.
I didn't say anything explict about the US staircase policy. All I said is that the trends on fire deaths the other person identified in Finland apply here in my experience, and that additional stair cases won't help those deaths. The logical part is that if you're unaware of danger (asleep/passed out), you can't take action to avoid it. The policies that would help in those situations are sprinklers, but there's some controversy on them being mandated.
> The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature
Grenfell was a failure of regulations to be applied and bad retrofitting.
The cladding was supposed to conform to a specific rating that means it doesn't cause fire spread. Ie, it can burn, but as soon as a heat source is taken away it stopped burning (its more complex than that, but you get the idea that its not supposed to just burn like crazy)
What actually happened is that the fire rating that was given to it was suspect, and it wasn't applied correctly. I had assumed that the type of insolation (either EPS or Polyisocyanurate) was fire proof, as in I doesn't burn like a plastic bag when exposed to flame. Because thats what the fire rating implies. However there are two standards and its a bit hazy. You can have something like rockwool, that doesn't burn as well as industrial packing polystyrene(EPS) which does.
In the 70s when these buildings were built, they had the right idea[1]: concrete boxes with a brick skin. Minimal holes between the flats, and any hole was liberally blocked with asbestos.
THe problem came when asbestos was removed, or the external walls were covered in a flammable non-encased/fire compartmentalised cladding.
In Grenfel, the building itself won't have been particularly combustible in the first instance, but the cladding - being plastic most certainly was.
Add to that the lack sprinklers, and a council that is not sympathetic to the residents there and we got a disaster.
It was a confluence of indifference by the council to residents calls to sort out sprinklers and firedoors, pandering to richer residents of Kensington: the cladding only went on to make richer residents view better.
Add on faming of results about how fire worthy the cladding was by the people selling it, and it being badly fitted so fire could travel up the building underneath it.
And then after this tragedy, how little was done in its wake.
> the cladding only went on to make richer residents view better.
The cladding should have reduced the residents' heating bills substantially, reducing fuel poverty and helping the environment. In fact one of the reasons the building was clad in turns-out-its-highly-flammable Celotex instead of a truly non-flammable insulation like Rockwool was because of its higher U-value.
I live in a former yugoslav socialist building, and our external walls are made from reinforced concrete. Our internal walls are reinforced concrete. Our bathroom walls are reinforced concrete. Drilling a hole to pull a network cable from one room to another is a pain.
Culture shock was big for us when we moved from 'bad socialist block of flats' like that to a new, modern and expensive London block of flats made out of cardboard. I know that my flat in old country will still be there for my wife and I to retire if we move back, while this one will probably seriously deteriorate.
I agree, cabling is a pain but oh my are they taking us for a ride with these newbuilds with easy cabling. Houses are no better here. They say these newbuilds are all fireproof and engineers come once a week to test everything. Of course, I hope we never have to find out if the certificate is worth anything.
All in all, those Yugoslav socialist buildings put these newbuilds to shame. Even those 40 year old locally made lifts are better than whatever Otis is installing into newbuilds these days. Our lift is loud, shaking. Never experienced that kind of shaking in any of socialist buildings. I suspect though that newbuilds in Slovenia these days are pretty similar cardboard boxes...
> Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction?
Because that
1) that costs more money (if you object, "How dare we value money more than human lives?", replace "costs money" with "requires a greater amount of the limited quantity of human labor"), which means fewer homes are built, which means it costs more to purchase/rent a home.
2) Means buildings have to deal with the inherent topological constraints of double-loaded corridors (ie, apartments can't "cross-cut" the building, allowing cross-ventilation/greater number of windows.
Yet, on the other hand, the safety doctrine unnerves me:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place.
Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction? The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature, I can't see people being comfortable with the 'stay in your room' safety advice after this kind of event. People are going to follow their instincts and head for the stairs, and things are not going to be pleasant if there's A: only one and B: it's blocked.
One idea that comes to mind is building entirely fire-resistant steel and glass bridges between medium high-rise buildings. If you're too high up to use the emergency out-door stairs, but the (single) interior staircase is blocked, you could move sideways to your neighbours. Security and privacy concerns about having easy access to neighbouring properties could be mitigated by having safety-glass dividing doors with emergency hammers next to the lock. The lock could itself be opened by mutual agreement of both sides in non-emergencies.