Is the building egress system in high-rise building designed to cope with total evacuation?
While exit stairs in tall buildings are indeed designed to accommodate total building evacuation, there are practical matters associated with always having to empty the total building population. Some of these items include: 1. TIME TO EVACUATE Total building evacuation in certain structures may easily take one hour or more. During this time, occupants in a well designed, but still crowded exit stair may be injured, or may simply feel that so much time was completely unnecessary for a small, manageable and quickly contained fire-the typical’ fire that occurs in the tall building environment. 2. TIME TO RE-ENTER THE BUILDING Tall buildings are not designed to have the total building population show up at exactly the same time. Elevators are designed based upon the total number of floors and total number of expected occupants. They are not designed to deliver all occupants to all floors at the same time. Populating the building at the same time, assuming most occupants would utilize the
