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Elevators, 

Fire, and 

Accessibility 

Papers presented at; The 2nd Symposium on Elevators, Fire, and Accessibility 

Baltimore, Maryland 

April 19 - 21,1995 

Sponsored by; American Society of Mechanical Engineers 

Accessibility Equipment Manufacturers Association 

American Hotel and Motel Association 

US Architectural and Transportation Bamers Compliance Board 

Building Officials and Code Administrators International, Inc. 

Building Owners and Managers Association International 

Council of American Building Officials 

Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association 

International Conference of Building Officials 

National Association of Elevator Contractors 

National Association of Elevator Safety Authorities 

National Association of Vertical Transportation Professionals 

National Elevator Industry, Inc. 

National Easter Seal Society 

National Fire Protection Association 

National Institute of Standards and Technology Building and Fire Research Laboratory 

Paralyzed Veterans of America 

Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. 

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers 
I 

Elevators, Fire and Accessibility 181 

IN CONSIDERATION OF 

ELEVATORS 

AS PART OF 

A BUILDING EVACUATION SCHEME 

by Philip C. Favro 

Use elevators in a fire? Never! The very thought 

has been anathema among fire professionals; its 

utterance, blasphemy. Elevators are death traps in 

a fire. Everybody knows that. The notion of Using 

them for evacuation is ridiculous. Take for example 

what one fire expert says in a pamphlet on high-rise 

fire safety: "Most people know only one way to get 

out of a building, the way they came in. If that was 

the elevator, they're in big trouble. If there's smoke 

in the building they should avoid the elevator like 

the plague." 

Firefighters have almost routinely refused to trust 

elevators for access to fires on the upper stories of 

buildings. Stories of fires in high-rise buildings are 

rife with accounts of firefighters lugging hose, tools, 

and other equipment up flights and flights of stairs 

to attack fires above the reach of their ladders. And 

elevator experts have added to this lore by making 

flat-out statements that elevators are not safe in fire 

emergencies. 

And there have been good reawns for discouraging 

elevator use in these situations. For example, a 

. person may push a call button and wait for the 

elevator which, because of automatic recall, will 

never come, thus costing that person valuable 

minutes that could otherwise mean survival. Since 

elevators respond to car and corridor calls, these 

calls may originate at the fire floor, bringing the car 

and its occupants to the seat of the problem rather 

than to safety. Fear and irrational behavior may 

lead to overcrowding which in turn can cause 

blockage of the doom rendering the elevator 

inoperative and the car immovable. During a fire a 

power failure can occur, trapping occupants in a 

potentially smokefilled shaft with no means of 

escape. Finally, water from sprinklers or even 

firefighter hoses can short-out motors and cause 

brakes to dip or fail. 

Certainly history tends to support this concern for 

elevator reliability. Civilians and firefighters have 

been trapped, injured, and even killed when 

elevators malfunctioned or failed in a fire. For 

instance, five guests in a New Orleans hotel 

attempted to leave the building after being warned 

of a fire on a higher floor by the front desk. They 

took the elevator. It started down, went two floors, 

reversed itself, and went to the fire floor where the 

doors opened and the passengers died. And in 

New York City, firefighters responding to a fire on 

an upper floor of an office building, tried to take an 

elevator under manual control to the 18th floor, two 

floors below the fire floor. The elevator passed the 

lab, went to the 20th where the doors opened long 

enough to kill all of the firefighters, then closed and 

returned to the lobby. 

Nevertheless, elevators and their presence in multistory buildings are a fact of life. literally thousands 

of new high-rise buildings have been designed and 

buitt throughout the United States in the last 30 

years. What was once a phenomena reserved for 

maor cities is now common even in suburbs and 

out-of-the-way rural areas. 

Despite the spotty past performance of elevators in 

fires, everyone will agree that they remain the most 

efficient and effective mode of vertical movement in 

mutti-story buildings, buildings which house 

thousands of people in their vertical interiors who 

depend almost totally upon elevators as their means 

of daily transportation from floor to floor. And 

elevators have saved occupants in real fires, the 

most notable of which was the tragic Jodma fire in 

Sa0 Paolo, Brazil in 1974 during which 300 of the 

422 wMvors escaped by elevator. 

Today, virtually all buildings containing elevators 

have signs at each floor, near each elevator, which 

warn against the use of the those elevators in a fire 

emergency. Nevertheless, most will concede that 

their use under emergency conditions may be vital 
182 Elevators, Fire and Accessibility 

if firefighters and occupants in ultra high-rise 

buildings are to have a reasonable chance of 

survival during fires or other emergencies. 

The notion that elevators can enhance exiting and 

thus, buiMing safety is supported by studies from 

the National Institute for Standards and Technology 

(NIST) where researchers have developed a 

computer program called "ELVAC" which can 

calculate elevator evacuation times. These studies 

show that in very tall high-rise buildings, those over 

about 30 stories, evacuation time can be greatly 

enhanced by use of the elevators. For example in 

the =story Jackson Federal Office Building in 

Seattle, evacuation time dropped from 26 to 13 

minutes when elevators were factored into the 

evacuation scheme, a reduction of 50 percent. 

But still, a hesitancy persists on the part of many 

fire professionals, as well as many in the elevator 

industry, to 'sanction" the use of elevators-even 

under the control of trained firefightertifor use in 

emergency evacuations even though it may well be 

that in some fires in multistory buildings, the 

chances of death in an elevator are not any different 

from those in stairs. A! the Inn at the Park fire in 

Toronto in 1981 , for instance, of the six victims, four 

died in the stairwells. And in the MGM Grand fire in 

Las Vega, nine of the victims were found in 

stairwells, while five perished in the elevators. 

While this hesitancy is understandable, given some 

of the tragic experiences that have occurred with 

elevator use in fires, it once again points out the 

reliance that is placed on the sanctity of specific 

code requirements without the payment of equal 

attention to occupant behavior and how people 

tend to act in real fires. 

Studies in human behavior show clearly that people 

in emergency situations will tend to do what they 

are familiar with. And in tall buildings, where 

elevators are the normal mode of travel-the familiar 

means of transportation, if you will-persons tend to 

gravitate toward them, even when warned not to. 

Keating and Loftus have found that under 

heightened anxiety, people's attention becomes 

narrowly focused and they are aware of only the 

most obvious aspects of their environment. 

Peripheral cues, which are usually easily processed, 

remain unobsenred. For example, people who 

regularly enter and leave a building by elevator 

cannot be expected to abandon their habitual route 

during emergency evacuation. Studies conducted 

in England have found that if an emergency escape 

route is part of the normal circulation pattern, it 

may well have significant negative consequences on 

an occupant's ability to reach safety. In fact there 

may be fundamental problems with the whole 

concept of emergency escape routes that are 

designed to be used onlv in an emergency, e.g. 

stairs in a high-rise building, because of a person's 

reluctance, unwillingness, ignorance, and fear in 

using them. 

To add to this dilemma, something new has been 

added to the equation. Over the last quarter 

century, a social phenomena has occurred that has 

forced many well-meaning professionals and others 

to rethink their position on building evacuation. 

Culminating with the passage of the Americans with 

Disabilities Act in 1990, great strides have been 

taken towards eliminating the barriers that have 

hindered and prevented access to public buildings 

by millions of Americans who are physically and 

intellectually challenged or disabled. Now, these 

citizens, who make up about three percent of the 

general population, are able to access buildings as 

never before. In the future, virtually all new public 

buildings will be accessible to persons with 

disabilities. That means that if a building is more 

than one story, it is likely to have an elevator. And 

if it has an elevator, that elevator will be used. Not 

as a special tool for those who are confined to 

wheel chairs or who are otherwise unable to 

negotiate stairs, but by just about everyone who 

enters and leaves the upper floors of those 

buildings. 

And once individuals with mobillty limitations are 

present in buildings, how will they get out if there's 

a fire or other emergency that requires evacuation? 

At last fall's NFPA meeting in Toronto, a speaker 

related how one women figured she would do it. 

Confined to a wheel chair and working on the 14th 

story of an office building, she knew not to use the 

elevator. But she said she was not concerned 

because she would go.to her office window where 

firefighters could use ladders to carry her to safety. 

Silly? Maybe, but probably not too far from the 

norm among people who know there are limitations 

on what they can do for their own safety in an 

emergency if the elevator is unavailable. 

There has been much written and much spoken 

about in the last several years that in today's 

modem sprinklered buildings, evacuation, or even 

relocation, is unnecessary. This assumption that in 
Elevators, Fire and Accessibility 183 

sprinklered buildings smoke is not hazardous and 

therefore movement of occupants is not required 

(because there is no specific threat) is naive and 

not supported by empirical evidence or scientific 

research. People, disabled or not, when faced with 

a threat, real or perceived, will attempt to flee. And 

it will likely be impossible to convince them that 

they are not ir! danger when they see what they 

consider to be an obvious problem such as smoke. 

Wrtness what happened at a 1975 fire in the World 

Trade Centerin New York, a fire that involved a 

waste basket confined to a single room. The 

occupants of eleven floors, 9 through 22, evacuated 

even though the smoke was light, was not lethal, 

and the occupants were told that evacuation was 

unnecessary. 

One thing is certain in all this, and that is that with 

the current move throughout North America to 

performancebased codes, it is even more critical 

that the way people actually behave in real fire 

situations be considered as part of a building's 

overall performance evaluation. And there is a need 

to start integrating elevator evacuation into the 

general evacuation or relocation scheme. The 

model building codes and NFPA's Life Safety Code 

seem to have moved in this direction. The creators 

of these documents have worked diligently to 

address the challenge of providing access 

egress for persons with disabilities. 

Technologically, however, there is still a way to go. 

All of the potential elevator failure eventualities cited 

above and more were taken into consideration 

when the so-called "Firemens elevator was 

designed, making at least those elevators with their 

threephase operational switch more safe and 

reliable. And while the knowledge and technology 

is there to solve the recognized problems with 

elevators in fire situations, there persists a pervasive 

problem that continues to plague designers and 

theoreticians alike, and that is how to maintain a 

clean environment, one free of water and smoke, so 

that the elevator can function as intended. 

In efforts to deal with this and other problems, 

much work has been done in North America and 

abroad which explores objectively, and in detail, the 

use of elevators for emergency evacuation. Studies 

dealing with smoke control, smoke movement, and 

evacuation have been done at NlST and there is 

currently a test project underway which deals with 

the very issue of water protection for elevator shafts. 

And, in fact, a recent NlST study sponsored by the 

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to look at the 

feasibility of elevator emergency evacuation at air 

traffic control towers concludes that such 

evacuation is feasible for new construction. This 

conclusion has led NlSr to. make a formal 

proposals to the NFPAs Life Safety Code to 

integrate elevators as part of the means of egress 

system. 

Elsewhere, the United States Architectural and 

Transportation Barriers Compliance Board 

commissioned a study, Earess Procedures and 

Technoloaies For PeoDle Wrth Disabilities, which 

recommends the use of elevators as part of the 

means of egress for disabled persons. Abroad, the 

British have adopted, as part of their Standard on 

Fire Precautions in the Desian and Construction of 

Buildinas, a Code of Practice for PeoDle with 

Disabilities, in which protected elevators are 

accepted as part of the means of vertical escape. 

The resutt of this kind of work has been a 

recognition of the concept by the codemaking 

bodies, and the establishment, within the codes, of 

accessible means of egress provisions which 

include the elevator as part of that accessible path. 

But that's only half the answer. More than simple 

elevator improvements must be made. Beyond its 

compliance with standards for automatic retrieval 

and firefighter override, the elevator must be 

protected, along with its shaft, from the rest of the 

building. And this is true even in sprinklered 

buildings. That is, it must be contained in a 

separate compartment, perhaps an elevator lobby, 

which encloses the elevators at every floor, creating 

an area that is protected from fire and smoke; or, 

conversely, which protects the rest of the building 

from fire and smoke which may be contained within 

the compartment. Further, the elevator should be 

sewed by a protected route, and should lead to an 

area that provides level evacuation through a 

protected route. Finally, accessible stairways are 

essential even in buildings which rely on elevators 

for evacuation, as a last resort if all else fails. 

when viewed objectively, this concept is neither as 

radical nor as risky as it may first appear. Nor is it 

anything that is overwhelmingly innovative. The 

concept of compartmentation and horizontal 

evacuation upon which it is based has been an 

integral part of fire safety in health care occupancies 

for more than 30 years. In these occupancies, 

building and firdlife safety experts have long 

agreed that the patient room floors on acute care 
184 Revalor's, Fire and Accdbility 

hospitals, nursing homes, and similar facilities-even 

with supervision and control of these patients by 

nurses and other staff-are virtually impossible to 

evacuate in any conventional manner because the 

patients may be totally incapable of any form of 

self-evacuation, and many may be unable to be 

removed from their beds without grave risk. 

To deal with this reality, the evacuation strategy has 

been simply to subdivide each floor into at least 

two Compartments with sufficient protection 

between those compartments (smoke barriers or 

horizontal exits) to allow movement of patients 

across the barrier from an unsafe to a safe area 

where they can be adequately cared for; or, if 

necessary, evacuated via elevators from the building 

without removal from their beds. 

It is this concept, and variations of it, that is the 

basis for all the work that has been done regarding 

effective use of elevators in fire emergencies. 

Taking a page from this philosophy, buildings and 

their evacuation capability, must be judged as 'use 

specific" rather than occupancy specific. That is, 

they must be judged individually and not as some 

anonymous entity lumped into an occupancy 

chapter of the building code. A departure from the 

norm perhaps but a critical element in performance 

based codes and in rational and reasonable 

judgements by the authorities having jurisdiction. 

Separation of the elevators from the fire threat is the 

surest way to make them effective. It is a practical 

solution that can provide safe egress for persons 

with disabilities, as well as others, by acknowledging 

their behavior rather than trying to modify it, and by 

taking advantage of their natural tendency to use a 

familiar route. And it meets the chilrlenge of 

behavioral experts to incorporate into all of our 

buildings the predictable changes in people's 

normal behavior that can be expected during 

emergencies. 

Do elevators have a role in this scheme of 

emergency evacuation? Most certainly they do. 

Unquestionably not as the sole means of egress 

from multi-storied buildings, but as a viable part of 

that egress system to allow for safe evacuation of 

those who are disabled, injured, stricken, or ill-as 

long as they are separated from the remainder of 

the building by barriers that render smoke and fire 

a less threatening foe. 

Alvotd, D.M., Groner, N.E., Klote, J.H. and Levin, 

B.M. FEASIBILITY AND DESIGN CONSlOERAllONS 

OF EMERGENCY EVACUATION BY ELEVATORS. 

NlSnR 4870, September 1992. 

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TASK GROUP ON BARRIER FREE ACCESS. The 

Standing Committee on Barrier Free Design and the 

Sanding Committee on Occupancy, March 1993. 

American Society of Mechanical Engineers. WRY 

CODE FOR ELEVATORS AND ESCALATORS, 

ANSU ASME A17.1-1993. ASME, New York, 1993. 

British Standards Institution. BRITISH STANDARD 

FOR FIRE PRECAUTIONS IN THE DESIGN AND 

CONSTRUCTION OF BUILDINGS: CODE OF 

PRACTICE FOR MEANS OF ESCAPE FOR 

DISABLED PEOPLE, BS 5588: PART 8. SI, 

London, 1988. 

Bryan, J.L HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND FIRE. NFPA 

Handbook, 17th Edition, 1991 

Bryan, J.L CONVERGENCE CLUSERS: A 

PHENOMENON OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR SEEN IN 

SELECTED HIGH RISE BUILDING FIRES. Fire 

Journal, Vo1.79 No.6, 1985. 

Building Officials and Code Administrators 

International. BOCA NATlONAL BUILDING CODE, 

1993 Ed., Country Club Hills, IL, 1993. 

Groner, N.E., Klote, J.H. and Levin, B.M. 

FEASIBILITY OF FIRE EVACUATION BY 

ELEVAlORS AT FAA CONTROL TOWERS. NlSnR 

5445, May 1994. 

Groner, N.E. and Levin, B.M. HUMAN BEHAVIOR 

ASPECTS OF STAGING AREAS FOR FIRE WRY 

IN GSA BUILDINGS. NIST-GCR92-606, April 1992. 

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UNIFORM BUILDING CODE, 1994 Ed., Whittier, CA, 

1994. 

Jones, J.C. A BRIEF LOOK AT THE HOTEL FIRE 

RECORD. Fire Journal, May 1981. 

Juillet, E. EVACUATING PEOPLE WITH 

DISABIUTIES. Fire Engineering, Vo1.146 No.42, 

December 1993. 
Elevators, Fire and Accessibility 

Kaufman, R.H. WARNING: HOTELS COULD BE 

DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH. IFSTA, Winter 

1980. 

Keating, J.P. THE MYTH OF PANIC. Fire Journal, 

Vol. 76, No.3, 1982. 

Keating, J.P. and Loftus, E.F. THE LOGIC OF FIRE 

ESCAPE. Psychology Today, June 1981. 

Note, J.H. and Tamura, G.T. SMOKE CONTROL 

AND FIRE EVACUATION BY ELEVAlDRS. ASHRAE, 

Winter Meeting, Vo1.92 No.14, 1986. 

Note, J.H. SMOKE CONTROL FOR ELEVATORS. 

Center for Fire Research, NBS, NBSlR 83.2715, 

June 1983. 

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REPORT ON MGM GRAND HOTEL FIRE, IAS 

VEGAS, NV, December, 1980. 

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CODE. NFPA-101 1994. Quincy, MA, 1994. 

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International Fire Chief, January 1981. 

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TECHNOLOGY FOR PEOPLE WTH DISABILITIES. 

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Philip C. faM0 current& operates his own 

fire protection consulting firm in California. 

He chairs the National Fire Protection 

Association Technical Committee on Board 

and Care Facilities, and is a member of 

NFPA's Technical Coordinating Committee 

on Safety to Life and the Technical 

Cornmiltee on Means of Egress. Mr. Favro 

is also a member of ASTM's E4 

Committee on Fire Standards. He has 

been a member of the National Task force 

on Life Safely and the Disabled since 

1978. Prior to establishing his consulting 

business, Mr. Favro sewed as California 

State Fire Marshal for eight years and as a 

line fire officer in the San Francisco Fire 

Department for 74 years. 

White, D. TOWERING TEXAS TERROR. Firehouse, 

May 1982.