Fire Safety Management of Escape Stairs
Under a formal risk assessment, it is important when planning a means of escape route system to take into account stairways that lead to other floors or transfer corridors giving access to separate buildings.
Multi-level and large complex buildings often contain more than one stairway and their use is often restricted for evacuation purposes only.
Evacuees using unfamiliar
escape stairways need total confidence in their location and
which floor they are on at any point of time during an evacuation. It
is vitally important
therefore, that these stairways are clearly identifiable and that each
floor access is
clearly numbered.
A concise, methodical
system will ensure that evacuees are more confident during an evacuation
process and the speed of egress will be improved. It will also assist
key fire personnel with their evacuation plans, enabling them to quickly
locate and identify any
potential risk to staff and visitors contained within a particular area
in an emergency
evacuation.
Tips to installing a simple yet concise identification system to your stairways:
Stairway
identification:
Using your evacuation plan, identify how many escape stairways you
have in your building and allocate each one as follows;
Stairway A, Stairway B, Stairway C
...and so on until each one has been allocated a letter.
(It is advised
that they are identified from both outside and inside the stairway -
see example 2).
Floor
identification:
Identify the number of floors in each stairway and allocate numbers
accordingly.
(It is advised that floor numbering is marked both outside and inside
the stairway -
see example 2).
Example 1: External marking of stairways
