The safety of people in the event of a fire
The safety of people in the event of a fire in buildings is dependent on having emergency procedures that make full use of the fire safety design features of the building and take account of the behavior of the occupants when faced with an emergency situation.
Earlier chapters have covered the design of buildings and this chapter examines how people perceive and react to the danger of fi re. Only by understanding how people may respond to a fi re can effective emergency procedures be developed and implemented that overcome human behavioral problems.
The aim of devising effective emergency procedures is to ensure that the occupants of a building are never exposed to fi re effluent or heat or that, if they are, any such exposure does not significantly impede or prevent their escape and does not result in people experiencing or developing serious ill-health effects.
This chapter discusses the following key elements:
➤ Perception and behavior of people in the event of a fire
➤ The measures needed to overcome behavioral problems and ensure safe evacuation of people in the event of a fi re
➤ Emergency evacuation procedures
➤ Assisting disabled people to escape. This chapter discusses the following key elements:
➤ Perception and behavior of people in the event of a fi re
➤ The measures needed to overcome behavioral problems and ensure safe evacuation of people in the event of a fi re
➤ Emergency evacuation procedures
➤ Assisting disabled people to escape.
Perception and behavior of people in the event of a fire
Fire safety in building design is aimed at providing a safe environment for occupants while inside the building. Provision is also made for a safe means of escape for all occupants since a fi re emergency usually involves evacuation to a place of safety. Obviously the effectiveness of the means of escape that is
provided in any building is reliant upon how they are used at the time of an emergency by individual
occupants.
The way an individual occupant of a building will behave to a fi re danger is complex. The psychological response of each person is based on their perception of the situation they find themselves in. In order to understand how people perceive the danger of fi re it is necessary to consider the principles of sensory perception.
When a person has become aware of an emergency they may react, for example, by spending time thinking about what they should do or by starting to move. This decision will be based upon how seriously they see the risk and how much time they think they may have to evacuate. It can be seen that individual perception is therefore critical to overall escape time.
10.1.1 Principles of sensory perception
The way in which people perceive risk is dictated by individual attitudes, skills, training, experience, personality, memory and their ability to process sensory information ;it is the process by which we detect and interpret, i.e. recognize information from our environment.