Abstract
Evacuation in health-care facilities is complex due to the physical impairment of the patients. This kind of evacuation usually requires the assistance of the workforce members. A proposed change of NFPA 101, Life Safety Code, would increase the maximum allowable size of a smoke compartment (a space within the building enclosed by smoke barriers on all sides that restricts the movement of smoke) in health-care occupancies from 2090 m2 to 3700 m2, almost double the size. This study aims to analyse the impact of this change in the required time for evacuating patients during a fire in order to understand the consequences of that potential change. This paper is focused on the area where the patient’s rooms are located. The evacuation scenario is a floor plan comprised of four smoke compartments. To analyse the proposed change, the smoke barriers between two adjacent compartments were removed in a floor plan and three ratios of number of patients per one staff member were considered (4:1, 3:1 and 2:1). A computational methodology was conducted to calibrate the model STEPS for simulating assisted evacuation processes. In addition, Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) was used to simulate the fire and smoke spread in a table and a PC to compare fire and evacuation results The evacuation results show that the change of the smoke compartment size increases the mean evacuation time by 23%; however, the fire results show that the available safe egress time is 16 min for both smaller and large smoke compartment. The ratio of the number of patients per staff member is also a strong factor that increases the evacuation up to 82% when comparing the ratios of 2 patients per staff member and 4 patients per staff member.
Highlights
The proposed change in the size of smoke compartments for health care facilities will lead to an increase in the number of patients inside that smoke compartment, this change would maintain the 200 ft (61 m) travel distance from the most remote point to an exit
It should be noted that this paper is mainly focused on the evacuation so that the fire results are employed in order to confirm if an increase in the smoke compartment and the corresponding increase in the evacuation time might cause a significant safety problem in the analyzed hospital
Since similar ratio of patients to health care personnel is considered in this comparison and considering that the maximum travel distance remains the same for both scenarios, the difference in the evacuation times between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 mainly relies on the typology of patients
Summary
The proposed change in the size of smoke compartments for health care facilities (from22,500 ft to 40,000 ft2) will lead to an increase in the number of patients inside that smoke compartment, this change would maintain the 200 ft (61 m) travel distance from the most remote point to an exit. It should be noted that most of the occupants in these environments are patients who are being treated for some illness and they may not be capable to evacuate by themselves (self-evacuation) For this reason, the health care personnel have to be ready and trained to assist (assisted evacuation) the patients in their evacuation to another smoke compartment or safe place. It can be assumed that all areas or smoke compartments have at least one person in charge that will assign the evacuation procedure to each member of staff. This procedure establishes which patients (room) need to be assisted in case of fire and an evacuation order
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
