BY TOM BRENNAN
For us in the fire service, changes in building trends, laws, and codes are intended to further ensure public safety from fire and its products. But sometimes without our knowing it, the changes can limit our tactics for successfully operating within, around, on top of, and under an occupied fire structure. Such is the case with fire escapes.
Fire escapes have been declared an unsatisfactory secondary means of egress for structures. New construction must design other appropriate means for approval. First "they" legislated out our smokeproof towers and fire towers, and now our ability to attack the fire problem (extinguishment and life accountability) from alternate means of outside entry. But urban America will have these buildings for another 100 or so years, so we will now revisit fire escapes.
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