Evacuation of people to a medium-high public buildings

The Main School of Fire Service, Faculty of Fire Safety Engineering, 52/54 Slowackiego St., 01-629 Warsaw, Poland

^* Corresponding author: rpiec@sgsp.edu.pl

Abstract

Evacuation of people into the building that is not classified as dedicated protective one is not a conventional solution. However, the experiment described in the study shows that with the appropriate identification of a threat and proper alerting this type of evacuation can be an effective way to preserve the health and lives of people at risk. Examination of the possibility of using a medium-high public building for this purpose is the subject of this study. The study focuses on the verification of potentially safe building areas that can be used to save people, as well as traffic conditions and capacity in these spaces. A research experiment was carried out with use of computer simulation in the Pathfinder software. For the purpose of this study, the possibility of staying in a area relatively easily accessible in buildings was considered. Places generally intended for possible stay of people were: staircases and underground garages. The conducted experiment showed that it is possible to quickly evacuate people into the buildings in case of specific danger occurring. Simulations confirmed that in less than 12 minutes it is possible to evacuate over 500 people from outside to empty spaces such as staircase or a garage of a nearby building.