Escape route
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Approved document B, Fire Safety, Volume 2, Buildings other than dwellinghouses, defines an escape routes as a:
'Route forming that part of the means of escape from any point in a building to a final exit.'
Where a final exit is:
'The termination of an escape route from a building giving direct access to a street, passageway, walkway or open space and sited to ensure the rapid dispersal of persons from the vicinity of a building so that they are no longer in danger from fire and/or smoke.'
Windows are not acceptable as final exits.
Escape routes may be protected or unprotected, where an unprotected part of an escape route, is that part ‘…which a person has to traverse before reaching either the safety of a final exit or the comparative safety of a protected escape route, i.e. a protected corridor or protected stairway.’
See unprotected escape route and protected escape route for more information.
[edit] Find out more
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki
- Automatic release mechanism.
- Emergency lighting.
- Fire compartment.
- Fire detection and alarm systems.
- Fire door.
- Fire Door Inspection Scheme.
- Fire Prevention on Construction Sites.
- Fire protection engineering.
- Fire resistance.
- Firefighting route.
- Inner room.
- Means of escape.
- Protected escape route.
- Protected stairway.
- The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
- Unprotected escape route.
- Visual alarm devices - their effectiveness in warning of fire.
- Vomitory.
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