Solutions for more housing? Let apartment buildings have just one stairwell.

Researchers say fire-prevention practices have passed the point of needing two staircases.

5 comments

I would like to know the difference in survival rates of fires with one staircase in these situations. It's easy to change codes based on political factors, but I'd rather do them based on statistical ones.
- Authors say that, in the United States, 99% of fire deaths occur in buildings without sprinklers, making that the key component of a safe building over multiple exits.
  
  Article doesn’t mention that but it does mention that the vast majority of deaths come from buildings without sprinklers, most likely buildings built before a lot of modern building code.
  
  Sprinklers + properly fitted fire doors are probably good enough for such small buildings to provide both suppression and spread prevention.
This might be a good move, but as someone who does construction design and is pretty consistently in the IBC, I'm hesistant to call it okay. The phrase "these building codes are written in blood" gets tossed around in my office, meaning that these safety codes are probably in place because of accidental deaths that happened.

Edit: I thought about it a bit more, and assuming that this has been properly reconsidered, this really could be a net win. The paranoid in me still likes more points of egress, but I can absolutely see this change happening.
- Well put.
I am not cool with this. Seriously just allow them to build higher.