ECN Forum Forums Code Related Discussion Building Codes for Electricians Troubling new trend

Cities are relaxing their building codes to encourage more new housing but some of these are troubling. One in particular is allowing buildings up to 5 stories to only have one egress route. The claim is additional stairwells eats up valuable floor space. I am not sure I would even want to visit one of those buildings, particularly past the 2d floor.
What ever happened to external fire escapes? I know they aren't "pretty" but it might look very attractive when fire is toasting your butt.

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Greg,
I have not heard of anything regarding this change here. I have a 5 story, 272 unit building coming out of the dirt in my P/T Borough now, and it has multiple staircases and 'points of refuge' areas.

My complaint with the multi-story buildings is climbing the stairs, rough and lot of times Finals, as the elevators are awaiting the Elevator Inspectors approvals.

The elevator guy always seems to finish last. I did a hospital like that. I also did a 4 plex that was 36' to the top floor because of FEMA. Keeps you young

I doubt this single egress will happen in the cities. I would be watching the section 8 housing down south and out west. This was just a quick blast on one of my industry dives. I may look into it more and see just exactly which AHJs sign off on this. It was just kind of a sanity check posting it here. The obvious answer is external fire escapes and that might be it is all about. It was about how much real estate a stairway takes.

Define “safety.” I can name entire cities that permanently closed off exits when the main threat was seen as coming from invading Romans.
Am I being silly? Visit any commercial facility or apartment complex and you’ll find code-required exits that are permanently chained, fenced, and barricaded shut. Tomorrow you MIGHT have a fire. Today you CERTAINLY have Mickey Meth-head camping in that back stairwell.
Ditto for fire escapes. How many times have they been used by burglars? Show me an old-fashioned fire escape and I’ll show you nailed-shut windows with boards over them.

Heck, I “improved egress” by adding a rear door to my house. Five weeks later some troll took a battering ram to it! (Thank heaven my CAT shaped him off). The new door, BTW, is the same door that stood up to the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy and the rampaging Hamas horde last October 7th. It should be secure enough.

On a more general note, the egress stairs at the World Trade Center certainly appeared adequate. Exiting people did not impede entering firemen. I’d say the designers got the egress design just right. (What they guessed wrong was the size of the crashing plane). My point is: Don’t fix what works.

After Ian I am seriously considering a direct Egress in my attic
We didn't go up into the attic but if I did, I would certainly want a way out without cutting a hole in the roof. A big gable vent I could kick out would work. The reality is we never even thought about the attic. If it had gotten much worse, I would have used one of the boats floating around in my yard. (there were 5 of them)

You reminded me of this story:

The hurricane hits, and it's bad. There's mass flooding, and the police come to the man's door and tell him he needs to leave. The man says "I'm not afraid, God will protect me." The police give up and leave him.

The water rises in his house, so the man is forced to climb onto his roof. Just then a National Guard boat comes by and tells him to get in. The man says "I'm not afraid, my God will protect me" and refuses to get in the boat. Eventually the National Guard is forced to give up and move on to help others.

Then the man drowns.

When he gets to the pearly gates he meets God and says "God, why didn't you protect me?"

God sighs and says "I sent you the news, the police, and a boat. What more do you want?!"

Maybe a roof hatch isn’t so crazy after all. Though I will point out that — at least according to UL data — un-alarmed roof hatches are favored access points by burglars.

I am not really that worried about burglars. We are home most of the time and I have a hunting dog strain of Yellow Lab that doesn't miss much. This is Florida. My sheriff encourages us to shoot burglars.
My guess is if someone is breaking in, they probably are not going to start on the roof anyway. They usually go after sliding glass doors. Mine is a little tougher than most with impact glass that makes the doors about 200 pounds each so they aren't just lifting them off the track. There is also blocking above the door that makes that impossible anyway. (code/listing thing)
My real plan for an Egress is a gable end vent that exits over a porch roof. From there we could either get on the roof or into my boat or some other boat that was drifting by. Push comes to shove, I would just kick that out.