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Screenshot of practical.engineering: Whatever Happened to Fire Escapes

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Whatever Happened to Fire Escapes

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Practical Engineering article and video transcript on the history of exterior fire escapes in US cities and why building codes replaced them with enclosed stairways.

What HN thinks

A thread about fire escapes that mostly escaped into arguing whether firefighters are bored.

Fire safety improved, exits less critical
Detectors, sprinklers, compartmentalization and concrete stairwells make fires rarer and slower, so single-stair rules could be relaxed to allow better, denser apartments.
Redundant exits still save lives
Others cite Grenfell, the WTC and nightclub fires to argue a second way out matters when the one exit is blocked, and some keep escape ladders.
Firefighters are general emergency responders
The big tangent: firefighters now mostly do rescue, medical and accident work, and surge capacity for rare big fires justifies staffing despite cost complaints.

Consensus: Most agree modern internal fire-rated stairwells beat bolt-on external fire escapes, and that firefighting demand is bursty so some slack is needed; whether two stairways should stay mandatory is contested.

Recommended in the comments

Emergency escape ladder (product): Suggested as a cheap backup egress for anyone living above the ground floor in older buildings.
Stewart Hicks ↗ (other): Recommended as a similar, great channel with its own fire escape video.

Summarised by Claude from the comment thread 3 days ago.

Points: 170
Comments: 162
Best rank: #27
Posted: 2026-10-21 by sohkamyung
Category: Science

fire-escapes building-codes fire-safety civil-engineering architecture practical-engineering

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