Earlier this week I read several news reports of a disastrous fire in an overcrowded Honduras prison, where hundreds of prisoners died. Many of them remained locked in their cells because there was reportedly only one staff member who had keys to the cells, and he left in the midst of the panic. It made me wonder about the current code requirements for egress in prisons. I know it's not something most of us encounter regularly, but inquiring minds want to know.
The 2010 Florida Fire Prevention Code, effective December 31, 2011, requires fire doors to be maintained in accordance with NFPA 80 and references the 2007 edition of that standard in Chapter 2 - Referenced Publications. The 2007 edition of NFPA 80 requires fire door assemblies to be inspected annually as part of the maintenance requirements, and the requirements for annual inspections of fire doors are specifically indicated in the 2010 Florida Fire Prevention Code (see 12.4 below). Fire door assemblies in new and existing facilities are to be inspected annually per the 11 criteria listed below, and a written record kept for review by the AHJ. Any deficiencies must be corrected "without delay." (Click here for FDAI FAQs.)
This article was published in the February 2012 issue of the Locksmith Ledger:
I have spent this entire week at our corporate office, so I haven't had a lot of time for posting. In return for your patience, next week I will post the third and final article from Lewis C. Norton's "How I Discovered Door Checks." That seems fair, right?
I saw this application twice in one week...the exit sensor for the mag-lock mounted behind the exit sign. It definitely affects the range of the sensor. The code requirements for mag-locks do not address exact placement of the sensor, but this seems like common sense, no?
This photo was sent in by Pat Bond of Shanahan's in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. Thanks Pat!
There have been a lot of interesting door-related stories in the news lately. In case you missed my Tweets...
I think I may need therapy. I was looking for a specific photo on my phone and here's what I found instead. As I was taking almost all of these photos, there was a friend, child, or stranger looking at me like I was weird. :-)
If you went to hardware school (like me), then you were taught that egress doors have to be visible and have an obvious method of operation, right? Well, every so often the question comes up regarding visibility of panic hardware, usually because someone wants to match the finish of a Von Duprin Inpact device to the door. Here are a couple of examples from one of my recent museum projects:
This post was printed in the January 2012 issue of Doors & Hardware
It warms my heart when someone says, "I saw this door and I thought of you." :-) That's what Angie Sutton of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies wrote when she sent me this photo of an old vault door on a storage room at the county courthouse:
This post was printed in the November 2011 issue of Doors & Hardware
This post was printed in the October 2011 issue of Doors & Hardware
This weekend I left my computer at home (yes, really!) and headed to Cape Cod for my brother's wedding. The wedding was held in North Truro, and the kids had heard me say several times that we were going to "Truro." Well, my kids go to a bilingual school and are fluent in Spanish. All along they thought we were going to "Churro," and expected to see a slew of the cinnamon-sugary donut-stick type pastries on arrival. The disappointment didn't stop there - we didn't see any sandwiches in Sandwich, and luckily - no obvious pee in P-Town (the common nickname for Provincetown, Massachusetts).
I received a lot of vacation photos this summer, including these from my pal Eyal Bedrik of Entry Systems Ltd in Israel, who apparently spent 5 weeks in the U.S. but didn't stop by to visit me. ;-)
On this day in history, September 19th, 1902, a stampede at the Shiloh Baptist Church resulted in the deaths of 120 people. The church was clearly over occupant load capacity with thousands packed in to hear Booker T Washington speak, but I wonder about the available exits. Did the occupants rush the entrance door because that was the one they were familiar with? Were other exits marked and operable?
This multitude of blocked exit photos was sent by Ian Childs of New Directions in Building Services, Sydney Australia. I think I may need to go thank Ian in person. :-)
I can't believe it has been 10 years already. I've seen a lot of remembrances in the media this week...it's one of those moments in time when we'll never forget where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, how we felt. I was about 6 weeks away from having my first child, and I first saw the television coverage at the midwife's office. They had turned off the TV in the waiting room, but had it on in an inner office...I guess it was best to keep the pack of pregnant ladies calm and deal with our anxiety one-on-one.
These are the photos that I referred to in my post about Imperial Foods and the locked/blocked exits there. These photos were taken last week, illustrating that there's still work to be done in awareness of egress requirements. This is a 7-story office building, and one of the two exits was closed off because of construction on the decking outside the door. The photos were sent to me by Peter Jordan of Jordan Consultants.
Twenty years ago today, a fast-moving fire at the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant killed 25 and injured 54 of the 90 workers in the plant. Although I think egress conditions and awareness have improved in the last 20 years, there's definitely room for continued improvement. I frequently receive photos of appalling egress and fire door modifications, including some photos that I received this week of an office building exit that was blocked for construction, leaving only one exit for a 7-story office building. I'll post those photos here soon.
Today's Wordless Wednesday photo was sent in by David Sochaczevski, an architect with the Soltron Group in Montreal. David saw this door near the Stitch ride in Disney's Magic Kingdom. At first glance this application clearly looks like a code problem, but I just couldn't imagine Disney purposely installing hardware that would require two motions to exit. I asked Disney about it but I was told that any information about this door was proprietary. I asked the local fire marshal and received this reply: "Thank you for bringing this safety concern to our department. The configuration in the picture you provided is not as it appears and the door does function according to code requiring only one motion to open the door."
This post was printed in the September 2011 issue of Doors & Hardware
One of my favorite job-related activities is going into a facility and helping with their hardware problems. This week I was called into a police station to look at a door that had allowed several escapes, as well as the main entrance. I thought it would be fun to see what you all would recommend in these situations.
These were sent in by Mary Hinton of Mulhaupt's Inc. Can you imagine trying to exit from this "auction house" (junk shop) in an emergency? Their front door lever needs some help too. This might have been the first signal to get back in the car and keep driving!
Here's the latest batch of photos sent in by blog readers. Thanks everyone!
These photos were sent in by Morriss Johnson of CMA, the architectural firm working on the renovation of the Ridglea Theater. The first two photos are nice, but I LOVE the one of the pair. And YES, it is a required egress door.
Here are some links to recent door-related social media activity. Enjoy!
These photos were sent in by Nolan Thrope of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies. He said they had the velcro version of wander-prevention on numerous doors. What say you?
This photo was sent in by Kathi Frelk of Anderson Lock (check out their blog!). It's perfect for Wordless Wednesday because I have no words for this application. Well, I guess I could say that two rim devices with a removable mullion would have been a much more secure application, but would anyone listen?
These photos were taken by Ted Wightman of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, at a fishing lodge in a remote area of Ontario, Canada. I wonder who they were trying to keep out...the bears?
It's not often you find the variety of egress-related news stories that I've seen lately, so I compiled a few here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
We're on the last leg of our road trip and will be home today, so here's a quick post to tide you over. I have lots more photos to share and the fact that they won't be chronologically presented offends my orderly side, but so be it.
We're currently on our Summer 2011 Road Trip and I'm on the hunt for doors of interest, but so far I'm seeing more sights like this:
I first saw this door a few weeks ago but I was late for a meeting, so I hunted it down again. It's the rear exit from a Chinese restaurant - I didn't go inside to check out the situation, but even if it's just an exit from the kitchen it still doesn't meet the requirements for single operation egress.
We headed to Ogunquit, Maine for Father's Day...Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!
Today is the 39th anniversary of the fire at the Hotel Vendome, in which 9 firefighters lost their lives when the building unexpectedly collapsed during mop-up operations. Stephanie Schorow, author of 4 books about Boston, spoke about the Hotel Vendome fire, the Cocoanut Grove fire, and the Great Boston Fire of 1872 in this video made in conjunction with the NFPA. There was also an article in the May/June 2011 issue of the NFPA Journal - "The Boston Fire Trail - A walkable guide to the city's fire and disaster history."
<--- You know what that's a photo of??? Rain - torrential rain, at our Relay for Life event this weekend. It rained on and off for most of the relay, but it was REALLY bad at night. Even the die-hard high school kids in the campsite next to ours ended up sleeping in a friend's living room (all 24 of them!!). Because we didn't sleep overnight in our soaking wet tent, there were a couple of hours that we didn't have someone walking the track, but I think we had people walking for more hours than any other team. There were several hours that our team was almost alone on the track. Yes, we're crazy! :-)
Last week I posted a photo of a deadlock on a pair with panic hardware, and I included a poll to find out what you all thought should be done about the problem. I received some photos yesterday that gave me the idea to make this a regular feature of the blog - "What Would You Do?" (WWYD). Check out the photos, the code excerpts, and scroll all the way down to vote in the poll.
All of today's reader photos came from my compañeros at Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies:
Still plagued by problems: Nearly a year after new ownership, troubled city apartment buildings remain in bad state
I'd love to know who did this, so I can give them a good talking-to (maybe they'll read this and track me down like the semi-concealed closer installer).
Can you believe I'm STILL attending town meeting 3 nights per week for 3 hours each? This was our 10th night and it will take a few more to get through all of our warrant articles. I'm sorry if I've been less productive than usual - I'm spending my blogging hours doing my civic duty. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. :-)
I'm still spending my Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday nights at town meeting, so I REALLY appreciate all of the great photos that have been sent in lately.
This post was printed in the May 2011 issue of Doors and Hardware
Feeling the Heat: Fire Doors - Building.co.uk
I was recently elected as a town meeting member for my town (a pretty large town - 68,000 people), and tonight I attended my first-ever town meeting. It was pretty interesting to see government in action, but I also found time to hunt down some old doors for you all.
I wrote this post on Saturday but because of technical difficulties I couldn't get it uploaded until now. Sorry!
I've received lots of reader photos lately...thank you, and keep 'em coming!
