[HN Gopher] The History of Fire Escapes (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
The History of Fire Escapes (2018)
Author : mooreds
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-05-10 11:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (noidea.dog)
(TXT) w3m dump (noidea.dog)
| hoseja wrote:
| [flagged]
| gwbas1c wrote:
| No, it's a very well-written explanation about how emergency
| plans fail; and why they fail.
|
| > american culture
|
| We are extremely safety obsessed. It's one of the reasons why I
| love being an American and love living here.
| gjvc wrote:
| lawsuit obsessed, not safety obsessed
| dang wrote:
| Can you please stop breaking the site guidelines? For example
| this one: " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| I don't want to ban you because some of your comments are fine.
| But we have to ban people for the worst things they do,
| regardless of their best things, the same way that criminals
| don't get to plead that they helped an old lady cross the
| street.
|
| We've had to ask you this more than once before. If you
| wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35737697 (April 2023)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29083753 (Nov 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271667 (June 2019)
| eatonphil wrote:
| Sort of related, I was reading a biography about Ford and after a
| fire at their factory in 1910 or something, they rebuilt it with
| "fire walls". Fire walls! Of course our term is borrowed from
| history. I was surprised. :)
| unwind wrote:
| The term is also used in cars, the wall separating the engine
| compartment from the passenger cabin. The wiki [1] says:
|
| _The name originates from steam-powered vehicles, where the
| firewall separated the driver from the fire heating the
| boiler._
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(engine)
| teachrdan wrote:
| A "dash board" was originally a part of a carriage that
| protected passengers from mud thrown up by dashing horses.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/dashboard
| ljf wrote:
| I was not expecting such an amazing and detailed article, that
| was so fun to read. I admit, I had to stop about a fifth of the
| way through as I have work to day, but firmly added to my
| favourites list for later reading.
| jwilk wrote:
| https://archive.is/VgIhc
| julian_t wrote:
| I once worked in an old building in London where the fire escape
| was partly constructed of wood, and also had the lightning
| conductor attached to it rather than the building itself. It
| would probably have done pretty well on the "fire", but not so
| well on the "escape"!
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Once, we were all really high and my roommates cig started a
| small trash fire. Upon noticing it (though being not wholly sure
| if it was fire or psychedelic distortions), we decided to put the
| flaming garbage can on the fire escape where it would be
| tomorrows problem. I mean that's what its for right? A place for
| the fire to escape. So obvious!
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Did it work? Did it become tomorrows problem?
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| sure did
| MisterTea wrote:
| Did it involve calling the insurance company?
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Nope. The insurance company was interested in other
| things on that fire escape, like my giant semaphore lamp.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| The patents in this article are great! They give new meaning to
| the phrase "Patent Troll". Who knew that BASE jumping was
| actually invented in the early 1900's?
| kqr wrote:
| I believe this is the article that taught me the difference
| between firefighting and amateur response. 95 % of what my SRE
| team calls firefighting is amateur response.
| ajb wrote:
| In the UK, there used apparently to be wheeled ladders at certain
| places to allow people to escape from fires. Here is one
| http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l58hAZ64A0o/VW9FCenJSSI/AAAAAAAADz...
|
| Because they were moved by hand, these had to be provisioned in
| each small local area.
|
| Of course, this only worked because the buildings were mostly not
| very tall.
| dang wrote:
| The talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02KEKtc-5Dc
| 2rsf wrote:
| FWIW This is @whereistanya, writer of The Staff Engineer's Path.
| jccooper wrote:
| > Btw, there's no retrofitting of existing buildings. Most of the
| laws only apply to new buildings and existing buildings get
| better as they're renovated. So buildings in NYC comply to the
| safety standard of whenever they were renovated last.
|
| But that's the thing that's notable about fire escapes: they were
| a required retrofit. Building code changes are almost never
| retroactive, but in response to fires "have two paths of egress"
| was added, and because it was so important it was made
| retroactive. It being very difficult to add a stairway to an
| existing building, external stairways were allowed.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-11 23:01 UTC)