2020-07-15 …
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2015 Dublin Declaration on ‘Fire Safety for All’ in Buildings – A Call to Action and Successful Implementation ! (Download PDF File, 106 Kb)
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Within the professional discipline of Fire Engineering … either a building is Fire Safe, or it is not ; the design philosophy of the Fire Engineer is irrelevant. Similarly, building designers must now begin to think and act in the simple terms of a building being either Accessible, or not. Too many pointless discussions, and too much petty squabbling, about constrained and constraining accessibility philosophies have wasted valuable time, energy and resources.
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Reality Check: A Universal, Dismally Inaccessible Built Environment !
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Click image to enlarge.
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Building Accessibility encompasses the complete cycle of Independent Use, in a dignified manner and on an equal basis with others … and includes the approach, entry and use of a building, its facilities and information systems … Egress during normal / ambient conditions and removal from the vicinity of the building … and most importantly, safe Evacuation during a fire emergency to a Place of Safety which is remote from the building and reached by way of an accessible route.
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Human Ability and Behaviour is a continuum … a gentle gradient on which every person functions and acts at different levels due to Environmental and Personal Factors.
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To be Accessible, a building must meet a long and complex list of inter-related Accessibility & Usability Design Criteria sufficiently well, i.e. the building must work properly for building occupants and users. The design target is Effective Accessibility … not half-baked accessibility, partial accessibility, the minimal accessibility required by building codes, or token accessibility.
On the other hand, and taking additional account of the current CoronaVirus / CoVID-19 Pandemic … the construction and operation target must be Successful Implementation, i.e. the finished building design, as constructed and operated, must provide a consistently high degree of safety, convenience and comfort for potential occupants and users during the lifetime of the building.
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People with Activity Limitations … those people, of all ages, who are unable to perform, independently and without assistance, basic human activities or tasks – because of a health condition or physical / mental / cognitive / psychological impairment of a permanent or temporary nature … are a significant vulnerable group in every community, in every society, and include people with disabilities, children under the age of 5 years, frail older people, women in the later stages of pregnancy, and people with health conditions, etc.
Fire Safety Codes and Standards for healthy, able-bodied, agile adults using buildings exist in almost every country ; these people can take for granted that buildings are fire safe for them !
However, guidelines concerning Fire Safety for People with Activity Limitations / Fire Safety for ALL (if those guidelines exist at all) are usually technically inadequate, entirely tokenistic and/or blatantly discriminatory ; these people must assume that there is a serious risk to their safety every time they enter a building. For them, this is a very significant barrier to their personal development, participation and social inclusion ; it is a clear and present violation of their human rights !
Forcefully mandated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted on 13 December 2006 … the UN CRPD’s Principal Aim is to ensure that the Human Environment (social, built, economic, virtual, and institutional) is sufficiently accessible to facilitate the safe exercise and enjoyment of those rights, protections and freedoms set down in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and subsequent International Rights Instruments, by a vulnerable and major section of the population in all of our communities.
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A serious design flaw in this building (among many, many others), i.e. a lack of Effective Accessibility … only one narrow, atrociously detailed staircase serving the entire building, lifts/elevators which were useless in a fire emergency, and no areas of rescue assistance adjoining the staircase … had a profoundly negative impact on Firefighter Operations and Safety on the night of 14 June and the following day.
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Click photograph to enlarge.
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It is time to Entirely Eradicate current obsolete, professionally negligent, incompetent and ridiculous approaches to Building Design which result in …
Fire Safety for SOME but not for ALL
Accessibility for SOME but not for ALL
Intricately inter-related … ‘Fire Safety for All’ is a vital component of ‘Accessibility for All’.
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Legal Compliance is Never Enough.
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Fire Safety for All – Nobody Left Behind !
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END
#Twitter … @firesafety4all …
#Sustainability #SocialInclusion #FireEngineering #FireSafety4ALL #PwAL #PeopleWithActivityLimitations #HumanRights #UN #UDHR #unCRPD #Ethics #Design #Buildings #Construction #Accessibility4ALL #ParticipationBarrier #FireSafety #Firefighters #FFsafety #GrenfellTowerFire #JazanHospitalFire #Resilience #LifeCycle #whoICF #CoronaVirus #CoVID19 #NobodyLeftBehind #2015DublinDeclaration
