4.1.3 Firefighter Accessibility
It is important for emergency personnel (e.g. firefighters, paramedics, police) to be able to access
a building quickly in the event of an emergency. Being a record holder does not exclude the Burj Dubai
from this rule. In addition, these personnel cannot be expected to scale all 162 floors through stairwells.
This need gets back to the elevator systems. The tower has service elevators that run higher than local
passenger elevators. In fact, one of these service elevators runs over 500 m, and is the tallest elevator
shaft in the world. (Weismantle, 2007, p. 342) These are very fast, and are configured to override the
local elevators to allow for the quickest and easiest transfers. The elevators themselves are fire/smoke
resistant. With these, it makes accessing the building a relatively painless process. However, what about
the converse, evacuation?