A guide to fire safety in industrial spaces

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Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/12/09/a-guide-to-fire-safety-in-indu.html

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Panic is what gets you killed in a fire. There is a reason they’re called Fire Fighters.

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sure. especially the kind of panic that ensues when your fire exit stair made of pallets is on fire.

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That is actually factored in to at least some fire protection mechanisms. In reasonably recent buildings with stairwells and one or more below-ground floors, for instance, you’ll often see some sort of barrier built into the stairs on the ground floor that requires the user to actively bypass it. Just a hinged gate or something similarly trivial; not a serious obstacle; but it’s there so that people running like crazy down the stairs don’t just keep running into the basement and end up there.

More generally, that’s part of the logic behind the ‘really clearly marked and obvious’ demands. Even if smoke and power loss haven’t killed visibility, fear makes you stupid, so a good evacuation route needs to be evident enough that it looks somewhat condescending to unhurried scrutiny.

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Yeah, that was not what I’d classify as a good idea.

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That, plus toxic smoke fumes and insufficient visibility and the lack of a means of escape. Oh, and the actual fire. That can kill you too.

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If you want an up-cycled looking staircase, why not borrow a welder and make one out of bits of old cars?
It’ll look cool, but won’t burn as well as pallets.

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If you want an up-cycled looking staircase, why not borrow a welder and make one out of bits of old cars?
It’ll look cool, but won’t burn as well as pallets.

Then you’ll just start the fire, either directly because there’s random crap piled everywhere, as usual, or because the whole place is powered by one circuit with 70 year old wiring plus old extension cords and other suspect DIY wiring, and a penny in the fuse box.

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The guide to fire safety is called the building code. You can usually get away with not following it. Even when following it tragic events can happen but generally less likely than when followed.

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Build the staircase out of magnesium. Then you can have the lightweight trendy metal staircase that still has the ability to catch fire

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