The basic requirements for evacuation routes must be met by all enterprises, organizations, public institutions, etc., since only correct adherence to all legal regulations governing the procedure for carrying out evacuation activities in the event of an emergency can prevent the potential likelihood of deaths by starting from injuries, even deaths. This article will examine in detail how the evacuation route system should be organized.
Law
The main document on which all the clauses of this article are based is Federal Law No. 123, the 89th article of which regulates all the technical aspects of the implementation of the required measures and control of fire safety. Failure to comply with regulatory requirements and violation of fire safety of evacuation routes, which were prescribed in this law ten years ago, poses great problems for a number of people, ranging from designers who do not comply with the rules of the building and ending with the persons responsible for its construction or any internal work, violating the general security order.
Terminology
The evacuation route is the route along which people travel in case of emergencies. This path leads citizens following it either to the street - out of the premises that are dangerous for their stay at the moment, or to some safe zone, which fully complies with all the necessary fire safety requirements.
An escape route is the end point of an escape route, an exit that leads from a danger zone to a safe zone.
The emergency exit is most often presented in the form of hatches, doors and, in the case of passenger vehicles, special windows. It leads either to a safe zone from a fire or other technological and natural disaster, or to the beginning of the evacuation route, is used as an additional means to exit if the main route was unavailable for some reason. It is not taken into account when fire experts evaluate the correct operation of the entire system, that is, they do not consider it along with other evacuation routes, do not take measurements to determine its size, etc.
Requirements
The basic requirements, which are assumed by the fire safety instructions in relation to evacuation routes or exits, are the same criteria that were spelled out in article 89 of Federal Law No. 123, which governs the code of practice for fire safety and was adopted on July 22, 2008.
- Firstly, in any premises and buildings, evacuation routes and exits must meet the main task - to ensure that people inside are able to conduct a quick and, most importantly, safe evacuation process.
- Secondly, during the design of these buildings and, accordingly, all evacuation routes necessary for use in the event of a fire, the installations that are directly responsible for providing fire extinguishing aids (fire extinguishers, gas AUPT systems (automatic fire extinguishing systems) , etc. . d.).
Doors located on the escape route should at least comply with the section of the rules that states that they must open in the direction of movement (since this is an escape route, it can be assumed that towards the exit from the territory of a dangerous building). Of course, nothing should interfere with or hinder them; Exceptions to the entire paragraph apply only to those doors that, in principle, are not regulated by special legal documents as intended for opening.
Prohibited Actions
When operating the escape routes and exits, it is forbidden to perform the following actions:
- Obstruct obstacles on escape routes or immediately before exits. This applies to ordinary corridors, flights of stairs, walkways between them, etc.
- To install in any premises, in addition to residential and multi-apartment buildings, various means for drying and hanging clothes, to create wardrobes or equipment for storing various items.
- Install any other objects, devices, mechanisms and thresholds that could prevent the flow of people to successfully evacuate from the danger zone. Such thresholds are allowed for installation only directly in the doorways themselves, and then only within certain limits of the permissible.
- Use for interior decoration, whether it is paint, cladding materials or any other means, flammable and flammable products if their fire resistance is less than five.
- Leave the doors in the open position for which this function is not provided in case of fire or any other alarm.
- Requirements for escape routes and exits also justify the need to prohibit glazing or other methods of obstruction in the area that is not amenable to general smoke pollution, the free exit of smoke from the room.
Very often, unscrupulous or negligent workers, or ordinary citizens relate to the above items without due attention and respect, which subsequently can lead to disastrous results. No one is safe from emergencies, and especially fires, so everyone should be more attentive to each other and perform their duties with high quality, familiarize themselves with the regulations governing the safety basics in such situations.
Emergency exits
Requirements for escape routes and exits are briefly as follows. Evacuation, that is, those through which people are successfully withdrawn from the fire hazard zone, are those exits that lead outside the building from the first floor by:
- A momentary departure from the territory of the dangerous premises or movement along the corridor towards the street.
- Driving through the lobby of an endangered building ignition.
- Moving along the flights of stairs leading to the street.
- Movement towards the exit through the residential area and the staircase located in the room.
The basic fire safety requirements for evacuation routes also indicate that leaving the premises from all floors except the first is possible by:
- Passage directly to the staircase inside the building, which in accordance with the design documents is considered evacuation.
- Passage to the fire escape, which is located on the outside of the evacuated building.
- Moving to the same stairs using the corridor route on the floor on which the person is located.
- Progress, again, to these stairs, but this time through the main lobby of the building.
- Exit to the roof, if from there the people being evacuated gain access to an external fire escape.
The requirements for maintaining evacuation routes do not end there, but the most basic ones were listed in this article.
Nuances
Also, in some special situations, it is permissible to evacuate people from a fire in a building through adjacent rooms (this may be classrooms, if we are talking about a school, other educational institution or workshop, if, say, a fire occurred at a factory). However, this should be determined solely by the presence in the premises that meet the previously described standards for the requirements for the operation of evacuation routes and exits that can be used during evacuation in the event of any emergency in the room.
It should also be noted that fire doors or whole gates that operate on a swing basis and are mounted directly on the walls of the room are not considered obstacles on the evacuation route, as well as other doors responsible for filling technical or other openings (for example, for driving a car transport).
Code of practice on evacuation routes and exits
This set of rules directly related to the requirements for implementing and following fire-fighting requirements for evacuation routes, regulates their list for all possible types of structures for buildings considered in this context (except for military premises, warehouses for explosives and any combustible materials). This set of rules focuses on the following points:
- People should be able to freely, quickly and in accordance with all safety regulations, independently exit from any building of this building both during the evacuation and outside it.
- If the requirements for escape routes and evacuation exits by designers or developers were not met, then in any case, rescue measures should come from qualified employees and organizations, with all the accompanying procedures.
- While following the evacuation route leading to the exit from the danger zone of a fire, people should also be provided with effective protection.
Building renovation
A large number of builders, architects, officials, owners of real estate, owners of any organizations and many other categories of citizens engaged in state activities have a tendency in the desire to quickly renovate as many residential areas as possible. The set of rules considered by us necessarily has the relevant paragraphs explaining the required actions in this regard:
- In the event that any work building that is already in direct operation is suddenly subjected to design renovation, implying a change in its design and / or functional purpose (or, if such a procedure applies only to its individual components in one way or another connected with fire safety buildings), designers and developers will certainly comply with all prescribed legislative norms in accordance with the basic requirements for evacuation routes. Most importantly, in such a situation, all categories of residents of this building or just people in it must be provided with an immediate evacuation in accordance with all the standards and requirements discussed in this article.
- Special technical conditions must be created for the successful implementation of design and construction works in situations that are difficult from the point of view of incomplete disclosure in the legal framework, one way or another connected with the requirements for evacuation routes in the event of a fire hazard.
Dimensions of escape routes
The dimensions of the escape routes are measured by parameters such as height and width. For each of the possible constructions, the values โโof these parameters differ and depend on many factors. The main indicators are as follows: the height of the aisles leading to the evacuation exits should not be less than two meters, or in some cases a meter, and the width is determined by the ability to carry the victim in the aisle with a medical or improvised stretcher.
The minimum widths of the flights of stairs are also determined by the functionality of the buildings, the evacuation of which is considered. For example, in public institutions such as kindergartens, schools, hospitals, this number is one meter and thirty-five centimeters, while buildings in which more than two hundred people can be on any floor must meet the standard of one meter and twenty centimeters for flights of stairs.
Doors
There is another list of rules that must be observed, but this time in relation to the doors. It looks like this:
- All doors that are located directly on the evacuation routes, regardless of their purpose, must be opened exclusively towards the exit from the building.
- None of them should contain any mechanisms that significantly complicate their discovery during an emergency.
- The doorways adjacent to the staircases are equipped with special materials that contribute to their compaction, which was done in order to prevent smoke and burning (asphyxiation is the main cause of death in a fire, although many believe that it is burns) to penetrate all corners of the building.
If any of these mandatory technical conditions and the basic requirements for evacuation routes have not been met, then non-compliant passages are automatically classified as emergency, that is, they cannot be included in the main evacuation plan.
Total
The regulatory requirements for evacuation routes considered in this article are a thorough and binding list of rules that governs the most important issues regarding technical safety and the procedure for dealing with an accident that risks the health or life of all people in the building. It must be designed and built in compliance with all the parameters indicated in this manual. Otherwise, a large number of people may suffer, because sometimes, it would seem, the most insignificant obstacle that arises before a person who intends to leave the building at a dangerous moment, can delay and cause the death of the victim.
Unfortunately, in our country very often the most basic requirements for evacuation routes and safety in general are ignored, whether it is the rules necessary for execution during fires or any other. Often the actual dimensions of escape routes are in reality less effective than those stated in the documents regulating these parameters. Sometimes such miscalculations are made due to banal negligence, and often with the aim of saving money allocated for construction. In any case, the public should be more actively involved in such legal processes, contributing to a more complete compliance with the code of practice. This is necessary to minimize the risks of fires in buildings. Also, the lack of indifference on the part of citizens and the strict observance of legislation by relevant authorities minimizes the number of cases in which, if a fire breaks out, one of the people inside will suffer serious injuries or die.