Study of announced evacuation drill from a retail store

Abstract

Study of evacuation from fire is always focused on evacuation models, but rarely on evacuation experiments. This paper presents the results acquired from an announced evacuation drill of XIN LIAN XIN Store in China. There are two floors and five emergency exits in the building. Most of the customers knew there would be an evacuation drill before they entered the store, but they did not know the exact beginning time. The video of the whole evacuation process was recorded using television cameras installed in the store. The customers who evacuated from the store were asked to complete a questionnaire by researchers positioned outside the five exits. Analysis of the videotapes provided information on total evacuation time and actual number of customers who evacuated from the store. Questionnaires present the information on customer characteristics, primary behavior at alarm, pre-movement time and exit choice. The analysis results show that pre-movement time is an important part of evacuation process. Strengthening detector, alarm equipments and staff training are very effective and necessary for fire safety in China. These data can also be used as input parameters for evacuation models in performance-based fire protection design or validating the evacuation models' accuracy.