How Hidden Engineering Keeps You Alive in Apartment Fires

As a fire engineer, I have to say: extremely well done! I liked your focus on stay put/shelter in place policies, that’s generally what we want people to do in the UK. However, as this is for an international audience, I’d like to touch on a few points: Know your building Get familiar with the plans and notices posted in YOUR building. Know and follow their advice. Know your escape routes. Know what to do when you hear the fire alarm go off. This goes for your home as well as your place of work. Don’t fight the fire Unless there is a very small fire, outdoors, on a calm day, you a) won’t be doing much with a fire extinguisher anyways and b) risk smoke inhalation, which has extremely dangerous short and long term effects. Stand up for your fire safety Make sure access and egress routes are clear. Talk to neighbours who block the hallways with unnecessary items. Don’t let people park illegally in fire lanes, not even for a few minutes. Demand that your buildings fire equipment is serviced regularly, make sure fire doors close well and close automatically. If your building managers refuse to do something, talk to your city’s fire department, they can conduct an inspection and enforce the fire code. Get involved Some cities have volunteer firefighters, others have other volunteer positions. If you want, get involved, they’ll be happy to welcome you.

This doesn’t apply in the UK. Many buildings still have the same cladding as the Grenfell tower, the residents are unable to sell their flats and move away because they are knowingly not fire-safe, the building managers won’t remove the cladding because there’s no government pressure to do so and the residents can’t remove it themselves. They are forced to live in a deathtrap

Most informative, I actually didn't know why people are so calm even when there's a fire. It's a even more serious situation here in Singapore, where the fire can spread quite far. Now I know why, thank you Andrew.

Firefighter from the U.S. here. I love what you said near the end about the dangers of house fires next to highrise apartment fires. Houses built in the modern day are filled to the brim with synthetic materials, like plastics and foams. These building materials, while significantly cheaper, are also extremely dangerous in fires. When they burn, they give off extremely toxic byproducts, be it by smoke, or gas. Another thing that you touched on, but I really want to emphasize. ALWAYS SLEEP WITH YOUR DOOR CLOSED!!! This gives you waaayyy more time to react to your smoke alarms (assuming they work, of course (change the batteries when they ask you to, please!)) and either escape, or shelter in place effectively. Even those cheap and hollow interior residential doors can keep you safe from extreme heat or fire for several minutes.

I live in a mill building that was converted to apartments. There is very thick fire resistant material below each floor, and walls between units are double fire rated sheetrock on each side (which also greatly reduces noise). In my 1 bedroom apartment there are 10 sprinkler heads, and the building has a massive generator backed pump capable of running every sprinkler head in the building at full pressure. There has been an apartment fire while I've lived here, and aside from smoke that did get into common areas the damage was entirely contained to the one apartment. I feel very safe here.

Regarding the UK, you should be aware that we have an unprecedented situation of flamable external cladding mounted to many buildings. This has resulted in one of our worst fire disasters, Grenfell. There's a lot to this issue, worth researching.

Hi Andrew, I'm a fire alarm technician in Florida. I have to say you did your research on this and your information was flawless. I take my job very serious knowing that lives could be at stake. A big part of fire saftey is knowing what to do when there is a fire present in the building that a individual is at. I hope your videos reaches way more people.

Hey man love the content and want you to succeed! I've always wondered what went into my apartment to keep me safe from fires and often thought about how I might need to jump out the window and onto the tree someday to escape one. Well maybe that's not quite what I need to be prepared to do after watching your video. :-) Thanks again!

I'm a fire sprinkler designer who has designed systems for a dozen and a half high rises. I absolutely appreciate this video! High rises absolutely are safer than most other buildings due to the large number of extra requirements, even just for the fire sprinkler system itself. Thanks for helping educate the general public on such an important topic!! You've got a new subscriber. Also, shout out to Seneca College in Toronto for my education.

I'll have to remember that UL fire demo video. I work in a high rise and the door to my group's area is a fire door but people leave it open all the time. We do a safety topic every month and you better believe I'm going to do the importance of fire doors next haha

I work for a big city FD and the biggest problem we have in appartement buildings (low and high rise) is people wedging fire doors open or interfering with the automatic closing systems. It basically bypasses all the protection of a fire break and spreads smoke everywhere. It's more common in poorly maintained buildings often owned by slumlords but I've also seen it in public housing and expensive condo towers. Only a few days ago we ran a 3am call for a small trash fire in the basement garbage room of a 4 floor 60 apt building, all the hallway and stairs fire doors were jammed open so though the fire was small and never spread from the room, all the stairwells and hallways were filled with smoke. It happens too often.

It's been a while since your last video but I really enjoy your story-telling! Especially on topics that don't necessarily seem as exciting or mainstream

As for the part about stair wells. Most buildings in high rises have designated fire escape stairwells. These are made of metal and concrete with fire doors. These are often required to have a positive pressure atmosphere which keeps smoke and fire out. When evacuating always use fire escape stairwells. Never use any type of “convenience” stairwells as they are sometimes called. They are not rated to protect you from fire or smoke.

It's always a real treat to see a video from you in my sub feed :o This one was especially fascinating, and the time spent on your storytelling is felt really strongly Great narratives throughout

You've been knocking these info/story videos out of the park, amazing work again.

Did you mention the Grenfell Tower disaster (London, UK; 14 June 2017) where the flawed application of the stay-put strategy was tragically compromised by the building's flammable exterior cladding?

I'm an MEP/FP engineer, and this is spot on. Sadly combustible structure is making a comeback due to it's low cost and deregulation.

One of things that's also important is the consistency and sensitivity of the building's automatic fire detection system. This past summer, I lived in a newly constructed apartment building that has per suite fire detectors, automatic fire doors that are opening during normal use but closes when the system detects a fire, insulated fire escape elevators, and many other advanced features. The only problem is the overly sensitive fire detection system kept triggering and ordering whole building evacuation from people smoking weed in their apartments. After the third such evacuation, 90% of the residents no longer evaculate, which meant the state-of-art automatic system in advertently caused more complacency due to an incorrect setup.

The Emergency Operators told the people in Grenfell Tower London to "Stay Put" and most of them died! Granted, it was caused by the wrong materials used on the building, but I think I'd rather take my chance and run.

I was worked at metal industry for over 15 years and during that period I learn the most important thing when Fire happens: "Stay Calm and think". I can't even count how many fires I've prevent during 15 years, can you imagine melted Iron (about 1500 degree celsius), with calm head I was able to extinguish and localize 99,99% of them. Only 1 fire I wasn't able to extinguish and reason is I wasn't work that day and other people panic to much and let the fire spread thru the facility. It is an great and very informative video for the people who are not familiar with fire, destructive power, safety and prevention. Keep up great content.