I do not think we should dismiss the problem too lightly Jimbo. We all complain about stable door legislation, so we cannot base our fire protection strategy on the number of people who died in fires. Happily there arent enough fatalitites to make meaningful data. On that basis, we could virtually dismiss many fire precautions in retail premises since there have only been 3 multiple fatality fires in such premises in the past half century. (But hang on, didnt one of those involve a disabled gentleman in a wheelchair. So, if you want to play with data, one in three mutilple fatality fires in department stores involves a disabled fatality.) Next, we have a new risk created by the DDA. As fire safety speialists we should be responsive to new risks, not reactive to fatalities. Finally, there remain many buildings with no coherent disabled evacuation strategy-it is the next fire disaster waiting to happen. So, even if it is all simple and easy, it is not done (whatever IT is). Finally, ADM brings with it all sorts of new issues for design of fire precautions, most of which are totally cloud cuckoo. So what do we do, ignore it and hope that it will go away or debate it in fora like this?
