Tim Kaye of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies sent me this photo of a required egress door in a school, which truly left me wordless. 🙁
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WW: Deadlocking Latch
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very creative
this really makes me wonder , budget , easy , or just not skilled or trained in current law or
I have seen this in rural areas
wont find this in city s or populated areas
when I did a job walk years ago and notified maintenance or supervisory personnel of life safety incidents like this , I was told , they were self insured and would take care of this in house .
At later day found nothing happened.
just have to wonder .
Is it a UL listed lock??
Necessity is the mother of invention
Here’s a case where someone needs to be arrested!
Let me illustrate what I think should happen to a building owner, operator or tenant who does things like this.
A number of years ago, the principal of a school decided he had had enough of the fire codes and visits from the fire marshal. During the latest visit, he had been asked to remove storage of combustible supplies stored within a required stair enclosure. He told the fire official he was not going to do that. The fire official gave him a reasonable deadline after which a re-inspection would occur. Upon re-inspection, the storage was untouched and when the fire official approached the principal he flatly refused the order.
About 30 minutes later, two armed policemen and a deputy state attorney arrive at the school, handcuffed the principal and took him down town to central booking. He was arrested and taken to a cell. A call was made to the superintendent of the school district. By this time a hearing had been held and a bond set. The superintendent was firmly instructed to come down town and post the bond. That was over 30 years ago and I dare say my spies in the Fire Department always reaffirm that they have had the best of responses from the schools since, even with the passage of time.
Call me old fashioned but I think failure to follow common sense codes and requirements, most of which arise from the school of hard knocks with incidents that have caused injury and death should result in consequences and not consequences by way of injury or death to the innocent. A second lesson would be that fire authorities who are enforcing codes such as combustible storage in stair enclosures, fire and smoke separation doors and walls do that with might and right on their side – mess with them at your peril.
Hope they at least take the padlock off during school hours!
Good grief.
The director of maintenance and the person responsible for padlocking this exit device should go to jail. Actions like this kill people and to think this is in a school! Where are the responsible people????
We have to stop drinking at work. I suppose the kids are running sewing machines during their school breaks.
Thank you for posting that picture, someday while on a service call I might see a panic bar latch with a 1/4 inch hole in the latch and I would never have figured out why that hole existed. Maybe that function will start showing up in catalogs.
Obviously to the school their security is worth more than the lives of their Students and staff…Very Sad !!!!
Scary…
This should be a criminal act…
And to think somebody took the time to drill that hole in the latch versus finding a safer solution.
This is a far to common picture as I have been called to fly into a school to inspect reports of lets say problems like this (yes during school hours). I have to say this is common in the schools on the edge of country. This is where we will have issues as fire inspectors have trouble going the far out of the way schools. I have to say this is first with this type padlock as its common to use long shackle padlock.
Thanks for sharing. Sad but more along the line of really sad for the lives it could effect.