We had a false alarm go off in the building where I work last week. The elevators automatically shut down forcing the use of the fire escapes. The building is 22 floors. I was lucky in that I’d just taken the elevator to the first floor to step outside on a break. When they finally let us back in, I wondered what someone with mobility issues is expected to do had the building been on fire. Just die? Have a kind soul carry them? With most people wfh at least a couple of days per week, this seems really dangerous for anyone who might get stranded.
…that’d take a deep dive into obsolete building codes to identify exactly when the concept was first introduced: BOCA, southern/standard, and uniform building codes all merged into IBC about twenty-five years ago so we’re talking about old paper code books from twentieth century…
…areas of refuge are closely tied to modern accessibility standards which arose from the ADA in 1990; i’m guessing they were widely introduced sometime in that decade, possibly earlier for high-rises or hazardous occupancies, but they were definitely part of 1997 UBC (which most of california enforced) and 2000 IBC…
(i started working professionally in 1993 and every project i worked on was fully accessible, but adoption varied across different jurisdictions and when i worked in california a decade later they were waaaay less accessible than texas)