PANIC AND HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS

Major University Lecturer eng. Alin MOCIOI PhD std.1

Major University Assistant Professor eng. Manuel ŞERBAN PhD2
Major University Assistant Professor eng. Florin NEACŞA PhD3
1, 2, 3
Police Academy “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Fire Officers Faculty
Bucharest, ROMANIA

1 ABSTRACT

The article presents some considerations about the high-rise buildings fires and the
human behavior in case of such type of emergency. It is very well known that the rate of
buildings construction in the last few years, in Romania, increased, especially in Bucharest. All
over the capital site you can see new high-rise buildings. This fact must be taken into account
by the specialists working in firefighting, fire prevention and fire protection fields. They also
must not forget the most important and almost uncontrollable phenomenon – panic – that can
complicate a lot the rescuing interventions. We tried to sound an alarm for this human behavior
in case of a high-rise building fire.

2 HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS

The latest years’ big cities overcrowd and the modern living conditions it brought the
vertically set up of the new constructions, so that the highness of administrative, socio-cultural
and apartment buildings, considerably increased.

The rate-of-rise of the number of high-rise buildings all around the world, including
Romania, imposed a throughness increase of the service
properties of such type of buildings and, implicit, to take the
most applicable safety actions to avoid injuring people, even
in case of a fire.

The fire safety in high-rise buildings is a very

important problem, taking in account the difficulties of
evacuating and rescuing people and extinguishing the fires,
because of the high-speed of fire development, the large
volume of smoke and fire toxic gases and, not in the last
turn, because of the people’s panic. [3]

All those issues affect the occupants of high-rise

buildings, consequences being more tragically as the
number of persons inside the building is bigger. Everything
Figure 1 – A high-rise building is getting worst if the fire is noticed by delay and if the
in Hong Kong intervention is slow.
 A high-rise building is a tall building or structure. Normally, the function of the building
is added, for example high-rise apartment building or high-rise offices. [4]

High-rise buildings became possible with the invention of the elevator (lift) and
cheaper, more abundant building materials.

In USA buildings between 75 feet and 491 feet (23 m to 150m) high are considered
high-rises. A high-rise building can be defined as a structure more than 75 feet high if your
aerial ladder reaches only 75 feet or as a structure more than 40 feet high if your highest ladder
is a 40-foot extension ladder. The materials used for the structural system of high-rise buildings
are reinforced concrete and steel. Most American style skyscrapers have a steel frame, while
residential tower blocks are usually constructed out of concrete.

Buildings taller than 492 feet (150m) are classified as

skyscrapers. The average height of a level is around 13 feet (4m)
high, thus a 79 foot (24m) tall building would comprise 6 floors.
A skyscraper is a very tall, continuously habitable building. There
is no official definition or a precise cutoff height above which a
building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper. However, as
per usual practice in most cities, the definition is used empirically,
depending on the relative impact of the shape of a building to a
city's overall skyline. Thus, depending on the average height of
the rest of the buildings and/ or structures in a city, even a
building of 80 meters height (approximately 262 ft) may be
considered a skyscraper provided that it clearly stands out above
its surrounding built environment and significantly changes the
overall skyline of that particular city.
Figure 2 – Taipei 101 is
The word skyscraper originally was a nautical term the world's tallest
referring to a tall mast or its main sail on a sailing ship. The term completed skyscraper.
was first applied to buildings in the late 19th century as a result of
public amazement at the tall buildings being built in Chicago and New York City.

The structural definition of the word skyscraper was refined later by architectural
historians, based on engineering developments of the 1880s that had enabled construction of tall
multi-storey buildings. This definition was based on the steel skeleton – as opposed to
constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with
Chicago's Monadnock Building. Philadelphia's City Hall, completed in 1901, still holds claim
as the world's tallest load-bearing masonry structure at 167 m (548 ft). The steel frame
developed in stages of increasing self-sufficiency, with several buildings in Chicago and New
York advancing the technology that allowed the steel frame to carry a building on its own.
Today, however, many of the tallest skyscrapers are built almost entirely with reinforced
concrete. Pumps and storage tanks maintain water pressure at the top of skyscrapers.

A loose convention in the United States and Europe now draws the lower limit of a
skyscraper at 150 meters (500 ft). A skyscraper taller than 300 meters (984 ft) may be referred
to as super-tall. Shorter buildings are still sometimes referred to as skyscrapers if they appear to
dominate their surroundings. The somewhat arbitrary term skyscraper should not be confused
with the slightly less arbitrary term high-rise.
 In Romania the high-rise buildings are I Grade of fireproofness, having walls, floors and
roof non-combustibles. The Romanian official definition of a high-rise building goes that it is a
civil (public) overhead construction, whereon the floor of the highest livable level is situated at
more than 28m elevation from the land (the contiguous roadway) practicable for the fire engines
at least on two sides of the building, among one has the full length of a building side. [1]

When the last levels of the building are

duplex or triplex apartments it is take into account
only the level where are situated the common
horizontal traffic ways inside the building. There
aren’t high-rise buildings, as follow:
 non-residential buildings;
 civil (public) buildings which has
above the highest level another level
occupying maximum 50% of
Figure 3 – High-rise building schema constructed area designated for
elevator gear or technical rooms;

A very high-rise building is defined, in Romania, like civil (public) building that has the
floor of the highest livable level is situated at minimum 45m elevation, measured like for the
high-rise buildings.

The requirements imposed to assure the comfort and also for an easiest fire intervention
are fulfilled by some building procedures as: complex ventilation systems, complex water
supply installations, elevators, special detecting devices, fire alarm and extinguishing systems,
non-combustible building elements or finishing works.

In the last decade, several events have resulted in the need for full-scale emergency
evacuation. These events highlight the underlying vulnerability of high-rise structures and the
difficulty of mass evacuation, especially under extreme conditions.

Recent events, such as terrorist attacks targeting iconic or government structures (e.g.,
the bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) in 1993, the Murrah building bombing in
Oklahoma in 1995, and the WTC disaster in 2001), 1–3 technological disasters (e.g. during the
blackout in the eastern United States in 2003), 4 and high-rise fires (e.g., 2003 and 2004
Chicago fires) 5, 6 highlight the complexity of evacuating a large number of occupants in a
short period of time.

These events also emphasize the necessity of planning for high-rise evacuation – even
though evacuation may rarely be needed.

3 PANIC

Panic is a sudden fear which dominates or replaces thinking and often affects groups of
people or animals. Panics typically occur in disaster situations, or violent situations (such as
robbery, home invasion, a shooting rampage, etc.) which may endanger the overall health of the
affected group. The word panic derives from the name of the Greek god Pan, who was said to
have the ability to cause extreme, irrational fear, especially in lonely or open places. Panic is
also known as Anxiety.
 Prehistoric man used mass panic as a technique when hunting animals, especially
ruminants. Herds reacting to unusually strong sounds or
unfamiliar visual effects were directed towards cliffs, where they
eventually jumped to their deaths when cornered.

Humans are also vulnerable to panic and it is often

considered infectious, in the sense one person's panic may easily
spread to other people nearby and soon the entire group acts
irrationally, but people also have the ability to prevent and/or
control their own and other's panic by disciplined thinking or
training (such as disaster drills). Architects and city planners try to
Figure 4 – Edvard Munch, accommodate the symptoms of panic, such as herd behavior,
(1863-1944), The Scream, during design and planning, often using simulations to determine
1893 the best way to lead people to a safe exit and prevent congestion
(stampedes). The most effective methods are often non-intuitive.
A tall column, approximately 1 ft (300 mm) in diameter, placed in front of the door exit at a
precisely calculated distance, may speed up the evacuation of a large room by up to 30%, as the
obstacle divides the congestion well ahead of the choke point.

In sociology, precipitate and irrational actions of a group are often referred to as panics,
as for example "sex panic", "stock market panic". (See hysteria.) Panic is usually understood to
mean active, but senseless behavior (e.g. trying to flee in a random direction or suddenly
attacking others without consideration), while hysteria often carries a more passive notion (as in
crying uncontrollably). An influential theoretical treatment of panic by a sociologist is found in
Neil J. Smelser's, Theory of Collective Behavior.

The science of panic management has found important practical applications in the
armed forces and emergency services of the world.

Many highly publicized cases of deadly panic occurred during massive public events.
The layout of Mecca was extensively redesigned by Saudi authorities in an attempt to
eliminate frequent stampedes, which kill an average of 250 pilgrims every year.

Football stadiums have seen deadly crowd rushes and stampedes, such as at
Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, England, in 1989. This led to controlled entry gates and
stricter rules by the end of the 1980s to regulate seating arrangements.

4 PANIC AT FIRE IN HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS

People trapped in a burning high-rise building who cannot be reached by your highest
ladder will leap to their deaths, attempt to climb down knotted bed-sheets and fall, scribble
notes telling where they are trapped and drop them from smoky windows, or have their last
cries for help recorded on fire dispatchers' telephones when buildings are constructed beyond
the reach of a fire department's highest ladder.

SCIENTISTS studying stampeding crowds have proved the old adage – more haste, less
speed.

Researchers who modeled panicking crowds on a computer believe that they have found
the best strategy for escaping from a smoke-filled crowded room with more than one exit.
 Normally, when people leave a room they walk slowly and take care to avoid brushing
into others. When they panic, people move above a critical speed and begin to push others. As
the panic gets worse, the herding instinct becomes stronger and exits become blocked.

Researchers from Germany and Hungary found that crowds begin to block exits if
people tried to walk faster than 1,5 meters a second, slightly faster than normal. They also
looked at what happens when a panicking crowd tries to leave a smoke-filled room.

Prof Tamas Vicsek, of Eotvos University, Budapest, said: "If everyone follows his own
direction and does not allow himself to be influenced by others, then it takes a lot longer to get
out. If everyone follows each other, then they end up trapped in one exit."

The fastest clearance was when people spent half the time following the crowd and half
striking out on their own, his research, reported today in Nature, concluded. Dr Dirk Helbing, of
Dresden University of Technology, said columns placed asymmetrically in front of exits could
prevent dangerous pressures in a panic. [2]

Generally is very hard to give general directions concerning the human actions at fire.
That’s depends of certain circumstances like: fire intensity, smoke volume and heat rate, type of
burning materials and substances, number of persons inside building, the dimension and type of
construction and the efficiency of fire safety systems.

Just few persons, entering in a building, think to the possibility of a fire occurrence.
Most of them has no idea about the fire safety measures and doesn’t know the behavior in case
of a fire. The hotels occupants usually are staying in an unknown environment and never
thinking to the possibility of occurrence of a fire or other disaster.

The real facts demonstrating that, in such desperate situations, people are not panic-
stricken, because of the self-preservation is more powerful then the intellect and so they are
going to act irrationally. Such type of situations often are generating victims, especially when
the evacuation ways are not well designed due to the number of building’ occupants.

The consequences can be horrifying. When the exits are blocked off because of the
excess number of persons, some of them can be injured or killed in this place, safe until this
moment. The flames, the smoke, the heat, the noise and the smacks (burning flesh sometime)
are the most important factors for the panic occurrence in case of a fire. The fever, too, is
increasing along with the aggravation of circumstances and of the real state.

If the development of the fire is not limited to the room boundaries where the fire
occurred, people have, usually, fewer alternatives. They can stay inside expecting to be rescued,
or they can get out through the smoke to the evacuation ways (if this is practicable, not in
flames), or they can jump off from the windows or to climb to the building’ roof.

People that having the experience of a fire or have minimum training acts properly.
Other people act unforeseeable.

From the studies of the human being behavior at fire, results that the limitation of the
fire development, in the first moments after its occurrence, has the biggest influence for the
evacuation of occupants. Also, a very important action is the smoke convection limitation. If
those measures are coordinated with well functioning emergency lights and with clear directives
the irrational behavior can be rejected and the number of victims decreased.

In the high-rise buildings the quick evacuation of the occupants is almost impossible. In
such case must be evacuated people from the floor on fire, two overhead floors and from the
beneath floor.
The evacuation by-stages can generate problems in the behavior of inhabitants in
danger. People rarely keep their cold-blood knowing about a fire emergency in the building.
Even they are not directly at risk, they are still hesitant when receiving the recommendation to
stay inside their rooms. It will be better to introduce the fire alarm twice to prevent the panic.

After the fire is tracked down, the severity of consequences depends vastly on the
reactions and actions of building occupants. The good actions can decrease the danger’s effects
and wrong actions can magnify them.

Studying first reactions of people when they discovered the fire in the building resulted
that 33% of them gone to see the fire, 20% of them communicate the occurrence of the event to
the other persons, 13% tried to extinguish the fire, 10% are prepared to auto evacuation, 8%
asked that the firefighters where called, 6% tried to call to the emergency number and another
10% get out immediately from the building.

Other factors token into account for the studies where the sex and age. After the fire
occurrence first actions of women and men are the same. In the presence of men, women tried
to communicate to the other occupants about the fire and the imminence of evacuation. The
men tried to extinguish the fire. The oldest men tried to extinguish the fire, not to get out from
the building.

One of the worst aspects of the human behavior at fire is that they are trying to enter
into the building on fire after they are evacuated in a safe place. There are different causes for
this behavior:
 relatives or other friends are still inside the building;
 to save their lovely pets;
 to save personal stuffs, money, jewels or other goods;
 to see the development of the fire;
 some of them, to steal from the unlocked rooms of other occupants some money
or other goods.

The physical effects of the smoke can have a strong influence to the human behavior.
The smoke is composed by visibly solid particles and invisible toxic gases. The visible smoke
can contain too big particles for human breathing, which when they are swelled can cause
cough spasms, nose irritation, nauseate or pukes. The eyes irritation magnifies the bad feeling.
All those symptoms influence the human behavior, decreasing the rational way of thinking in
action.

Most of the gases results from a fire are lethally. Just a short expose at these types of
gases can attempt to injure the lungs, gives vertigos and can affect the neuraxis.

It is possible to appear the hypoxia. In this case people think that they acting normally,
while their actions are totally irrationals. It is very important to give more attention to the
persons affected by smoke. Apparently they are acting logically but they can’t control
themselves and can get inside the building again.

It is known, also, that the alcohol and drugs (narcotics) has a big influence to the human
behavior. Most of the victims of high-rise fires, all around the world, were found drunken or
doped.

Concerning all these aspects it will be better to understand the real human behavior in
case of a fire occurred in a high-rise building, as follows:

 people are jumping off the windows;

 they are saving all their staffs, moneys, jewels and other goods, before thinking to
save themselves;
 human being can rest calms in a critical situation as they become nervous after the
normal situation is established and set the panic;
 other people are hiding in their rooms and they are not trying to get out;
 other inhabitants are running inside the building without a direction passing
beside the evacuation ways, without seeing it.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Due to the fact that most high-rise structures (i.e., >75 feet high, or eight to ten floors)
are constructed with extensive and redundant fire safety features, current fire safety procedures
typically only involve limited evacuation during minor to moderate fire emergencies. Therefore,
full-scale evacuation of high-rise buildings is highly unusual and consequently, little is known
about how readily and rapidly high-rise structures can be evacuated fully.
Factors that either facilitate or inhibit the evacuation process remain under-studied

Firefighters cannot order all the people in a high-rise building to leave during a fire. It is
not possible for thousands of people to leave a burning building quickly. It would take several
hours. High-rise firefighting strategy is supposed to "defend in place"--extinguish the fire while
most of the occupants remain inside the building.

So, at high-rise fires, we do not have another option that is available at low-rise building
fires. At a low-rise building fire, strategy can be to extinguish the fire and evacuate the people
at the same time. A defend-in-place strategy depends on two factors: that the building has the
ability to contain fire to a particular area and that the occupants will obey the fire chief's
instruction to stay in place. Neither of these assumptions is necessarily true. High-rise buildings
are not fire-resistive, and people leave the high-rise buildings during a fire regardless of
instructions to do otherwise.

At the World Trade Center terrorist explosion and fire in New York City (February 26,
1993), 50,000 people (25,000 in each tower) left the building without instructions because the
building communication system was damaged and fire department radios would not transmit to
the upper floors of the high-rise steel structure. One of the lessons learned at this fire, as stated
in the chief of department's post-fire analysis, was that "the 'defend-in-place' strategy does not
exist."
“Do Not Panic in the Event of a High-Rise Fire Emergency”.
 • Do not assume anyone else has already called the fire department.
• Immediately call your local emergency number. Early notification of the fire department
is important. The dispatcher will ask questions regarding the emergency. Stay calm and
give the dispatcher the information they request.

6 BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] – “Fire safety norms for buildings” – P118-99;

[2] – “Fire panic victims urged to slow down” by David Derbyshire, Science
Correspondent, Thursday 28 September 2000, www.telegraph.co.uk.

[3] – “Fire protection for high-rise buildings” – Selection of international documents,

Ministry of Interior, Firefighters Command, Col.ing. Pompiliu Bãlulescu, 1973.

[4] – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia