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Staircases and Sharks
The Single-Staircase Radicals Have a Good Point
This article pissed me off, for somewhat complex reasons. I agree with many of the goals expressed here. It would be good for staircases to not be brutalist concrete. It would be good for apartments to have more varied floor plans, and to let in more light. It is even good to examine past assumptions that have been baked into regulation and law, and see if they still make sense. But to abandon such a fundamental safety mechanism as a second staircase? This is, to me, madness.
The article makes the claim, unsourced, that "there’s no evidence that Americans and Canadians are any safer from structure fires than our neighbors around the world, where one-staircase construction is permitted". The main source article they link to does cite a FEMA report, which shows the USA pretty squarely in the middle of fire deaths per capita. Which, if staircase regulations were the only factor involved, I would find compelling. But there are huge differences in culture, city planning, fire department practice, and probably other factors. I will grant the point that I don't have positive evidence that a second staircase increases safety, but I don't see any strong evidence against the idea, either.
“In the architecture world it’s hammered in from the beginning that we need two exits from every space. But in most other countries, that second means of egress is the fire brigade.” There are many places in the world where I would accept that as a reasonable proposition. In a USA which has suffered from about 45 years where half the government has been systematically trying to destroy state capacity to do, well, anything, I do not trust my life to the response times and competence of a government entity. The thing about a second staircase is, it's really, really hard for that to stop functioning, for any reason. I am reminded of something Douglas Adams once said when asked if e-books would replace paper books (as related by Neil Gaiman): “a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.” A staircase is similarly like a shark. It does a simple job very well, and remains a standard tool for the job.
This movement to do away with a second staircase is also of a piece with "just in time" manufacturing, systems which optimize for short-term profit, not long-term resilience. Architectural safety is not somewhere I want to see that principle applied.
This feels very personal to me. A few years ago, there was a significant fire in my house. It was caught in time to prevent a major disaster, but only just. It was located very near the front door, and if it had gone undetected for a minute more than it actually did, would have rendered that exit impassible. And smoke was pouring up the main staircase. My house happened to have a back staircase and a back door, both of which I was extremely grateful for. [To be clear, it's an old Victorian house; what fire safety exists is largely coincidental, not by design.]
In the middle of the article comes the passage that really got to me: "The specter of big structure fires—like the fire at London’s Grenfell Tower, the single-stair housing project whose defective façade panels caught fire in 2017, killing 71 people—is what reformers like Eliason and Speckert are up against. But building fires are much less common than they were when single-stair rules were codified" This, to me, is the same heartless, capitalist logic behind covid-minimizers. "Sure, this kills people, but it's statistically unlikely to kill you, so why worry about it?" Of course, the fact that these fires (and pandemic deaths) will tend, like Grenfell, to occur more often to poor, non-white people adds race and class to the awful reasons why these deaths are seen as acceptable. The preventable deaths are simply accepted as (literally) the cost of doing business.
This article pissed me off, for somewhat complex reasons. I agree with many of the goals expressed here. It would be good for staircases to not be brutalist concrete. It would be good for apartments to have more varied floor plans, and to let in more light. It is even good to examine past assumptions that have been baked into regulation and law, and see if they still make sense. But to abandon such a fundamental safety mechanism as a second staircase? This is, to me, madness.
The article makes the claim, unsourced, that "there’s no evidence that Americans and Canadians are any safer from structure fires than our neighbors around the world, where one-staircase construction is permitted". The main source article they link to does cite a FEMA report, which shows the USA pretty squarely in the middle of fire deaths per capita. Which, if staircase regulations were the only factor involved, I would find compelling. But there are huge differences in culture, city planning, fire department practice, and probably other factors. I will grant the point that I don't have positive evidence that a second staircase increases safety, but I don't see any strong evidence against the idea, either.
“In the architecture world it’s hammered in from the beginning that we need two exits from every space. But in most other countries, that second means of egress is the fire brigade.” There are many places in the world where I would accept that as a reasonable proposition. In a USA which has suffered from about 45 years where half the government has been systematically trying to destroy state capacity to do, well, anything, I do not trust my life to the response times and competence of a government entity. The thing about a second staircase is, it's really, really hard for that to stop functioning, for any reason. I am reminded of something Douglas Adams once said when asked if e-books would replace paper books (as related by Neil Gaiman): “a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.” A staircase is similarly like a shark. It does a simple job very well, and remains a standard tool for the job.
This movement to do away with a second staircase is also of a piece with "just in time" manufacturing, systems which optimize for short-term profit, not long-term resilience. Architectural safety is not somewhere I want to see that principle applied.
This feels very personal to me. A few years ago, there was a significant fire in my house. It was caught in time to prevent a major disaster, but only just. It was located very near the front door, and if it had gone undetected for a minute more than it actually did, would have rendered that exit impassible. And smoke was pouring up the main staircase. My house happened to have a back staircase and a back door, both of which I was extremely grateful for. [To be clear, it's an old Victorian house; what fire safety exists is largely coincidental, not by design.]
In the middle of the article comes the passage that really got to me: "The specter of big structure fires—like the fire at London’s Grenfell Tower, the single-stair housing project whose defective façade panels caught fire in 2017, killing 71 people—is what reformers like Eliason and Speckert are up against. But building fires are much less common than they were when single-stair rules were codified" This, to me, is the same heartless, capitalist logic behind covid-minimizers. "Sure, this kills people, but it's statistically unlikely to kill you, so why worry about it?" Of course, the fact that these fires (and pandemic deaths) will tend, like Grenfell, to occur more often to poor, non-white people adds race and class to the awful reasons why these deaths are seen as acceptable. The preventable deaths are simply accepted as (literally) the cost of doing business.