Escape route
Approved document B, Fire Safety, Volume 2, Buildings other than dwellinghouses (2019 edition), defines an escape routes as a:
| The route along which people can escape from any point in a building to a final exit. |
Where a final exit is:
'The end of an escape route from a building that gives direct access to a street, passageway, walkway or open space, and is sited to ensure that people rapidly disperse away from the 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.
Alternative escape routes are: ' Escape routes that are sufficiently separated by direction and space or by fire resisting construction to ensure that one is still available if the other is affected by fire. Note: A second stair, balcony or flat roof which enables a person to reach a place free from danger from fire is considered an alternative escape route for the purposes of a dwellinghouse.'
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings
- Alternative escape route.
- Automatic release mechanism.
- Building evacuation.
- Emergency lighting.
- Evacuating vulnerable and dependent people from buildings in an emergency FB 52.
- Exit passageway.
- Fire compartment.
- Fire detection and alarm systems.
- Fire door.
- Fire Door Inspection Scheme.
- Fire Prevention on Construction Sites.
- Fire protection engineering.
- Firefighting route.
- Inner room.
- Means of escape.
- Place of safety.
- Protected escape route.
- Protected stairway.
- Safe room.
- Unprotected escape route.
- Visual alarm devices - their effectiveness in warning of fire.
- Width of doors stairs and escape routes.
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