Fire study findings

Here are some of the conclusions of the evacuation trials in Trondheim, and of the study of international tests that SINTEF´s safety researchers have carried out.

Two hundred people participated in the tests; their task was to reach the emergency exit with the aid of different marking systems, in heavy smoke, in less than 112 seconds.

1. With continuous illuminated marks along the corridor (lighting strips), 95% of the experimental subjects got out within the 112 second time limit.
2. When traditional signs were used, 33% did not make it within the time limit.
3. When safety railings were fitted, 26% of the subjects did not reach the emergency exit within 112 seconds.
4. Traditional emergency exit signs at ceiling level do not work well in smoke, while lighting strips result in faster evacuation.
5. Safety railings with notches are easy to understand during fires and people find their way out, but this takes time. However, this system is the only one that works in thick smoke when visibility is zero.
6. Traditional fire alarms do not bring about immediate evacuation.
7. The first stages of behaviour during a fire are characterized by uncertainty, misinterpretations, irresolution and a search for information that can confirm that there is a fire.
8. People do not use evacuation routines with which they are unfamiliar. Most of them evacuate by the same route as they came into the building.
9. The best and fastest evacuations are achieved by combining voice announcements and text that tell people what to do during an evacuation.
10. Current procedures for fleeing from fires do not work as they were intended. Among the reasons for this is that the technology employed is based on a poor model of human behaviour. The important role that human behaviour has played in fire disasters suggests that we should pay more attention to human capacities and behaviour in fire situations to design more efficient fire evacuation systems.