I know that many of us are door-focused, but sometimes other portions of the egress route leave me wordless – like today’s Wordless Wednesday photo from Steve Budde of Greenwood Care. These stairs are outside of an egress door serving a retail store of more than 50,000 square feet. How is it possible that problems like this – very obvious problems – remain unresolved for years (decades?)?
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It begins with the owner and/or facility management. There is no excuse for letting this happen, especially when given the amount of time it would take to get to this magnitude of deterioration.
Figuratively speaking, someone needs a butt-kickin’.
I agree, Jerry!
– Lori
I see a serious liability problem waiting to happen. Seems that fire&egress door inspectors could also be implicated for failing to note something this obvious and serious in their reports. The inspector would certainly note that, if present, debris or merchandise were obstructing access to the doors, we should also observe the safety of the exit discharge just beyond the exit door itself.
Like one old-timer told me, “When you know better, do better”.
That’s an interesting point, Tom. It’s hard to know where to draw the line, but I do think we should point out obvious issues like this.
– Lori
I was doing an inspection of doors for one of our new parking garages a few years back. When I was going down one of the staircases to get to the ground floor I noticed one step in flight of 10 that looked different. I pulled out my tape measure and this one step was only 9″ deep instead of the required 11″. I reported it to the PM and GC. They ended up having to redo that whole section of stairs. If this had not been fixed it could have caused a serious injury or fatality
Wow – that’s quite a difference! I was walking up the stairs behind someone the other day and at the top there was stone flooring that increased the height of the final step by maybe 3/4-inch. The woman almost took a tumble.
– Lori