Emergency exit
A fire escape is a special kind of emergency exit consisting of stairs and/or extendable ladders mounted on the outside of a building.
For any buildings bigger than a private house, modern codes invariably specify at least two sets of stairs, completely isolated from each other so that if one becomes impassable due to smoke or flames, the other remains usable.
[1] Some building codes recommend using a color-coded stripe and signage to distinguish otherwise identical-looking stairwells from each other, and to make following a quick exit path easier.
In older buildings that predate modern fire codes, and which lack space for a second stairwell, having intertwining stairs so close to each other may not allow firefighters going up and evacuees going down to use separate stairways.
For example, in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, some of the emergency exits inside the building were inaccessible, while others were locked.
In the Stardust Disaster and the 2006 Moscow hospital fire, the emergency exits were locked and most windows barred shut.
In the case of the Station Nightclub, the premises were over capacity the night fire broke out, the front exit was not designed well (right outside the door, the concrete approach split 90 degrees and a railing ran along the edge), and an emergency exit swung inward, not outward as code requires.
[6] Pictorial green "running-man" sign is mandatory in Japan, European Union, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada,[7] and increasingly becoming common elsewhere.
Worldwide, there have been repeated mass casualties in nightclubs and related venues where large numbers of people may gather.
A violent personal dispute, fire, terrorist attack, or other incident can cause a mass panic or stampede for the exits.
Firefighters have cited[citation needed] overzealous security guards who told people during a fire that they are not allowed to use emergency exits.
A further problem becoming very common in the US as of 2005[update] is that retail stores at night close one of their main entrance/exits through makeshift heavy metal barriers, signage, paper notes, or junk placed in front of the exits.
The goal of these regulations is to make possible the evacuation of an airliner's designed maximum occupancy of passengers and crew within 90 seconds even if half of the available exits are blocked.
[12] Following the events of the Victoria Hall disaster in Sunderland, England, in 1883 in which more than 180 children died because a door had been bolted at the bottom of a stairwell, the British government began legal moves to enforce minimum standards for building safety.
An investigation was launched by the Argentine federal government after 194 people were killed during the 2004 República Cromañón nightclub fire in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
