>> good afternoon, i'm lawrence kornfield. welcome to our brown bag lunch. the fire department as a lot to do with fire escapes in san

francisco. we have tens of thousands of fire escapes in san francisco. it's sort of like utility wires, until you start looking for them. you don't even see them. today we're going to look at them and for them and talk a little bit about what they are there for and how they should be maintained. what our standards are. so we are right here in front of building services office at 1660 mission street. we have one of many buildings served by fire escapes. they are typically used when there's a required means of existing or egressfrom the building. this building has a main stairway and all these fire escapes. i don't know about the backside. it probably has more exits that

would be typically required to have. >> typically fire escapes are the second. the first is for existing buildings. my guess is the building has been broken up. that's why they add more than one fire escape. >> and in fact one of basis of the building code is to get people how the. how do you get people out safely? >> right and the cold always says, if one is blocked there should be another one in 99 percent of buildings >> and there are limitations on how you exit. you can't exit from one tenant space to another if that space is locked. that's why we have extra fire escapes on this building. let's look up at these fire escapes for a second.

the fire escapes have a few specific elements. and we'll talk in detail about what they are. they include a way out on top fire escape balcony. the fire escape balconies. the ladder from the lowest balcony to the ground and a way to get on to the roof. i think those are the main elements of the fire escape. >> yeah. >> okay. and we're going to look at a bunch of different ones. this is a good example across the street. so first of all, how do you get out on to the fire escape? you can't have to climb out on a little window. we can see there are large, openable window pain doors,

>> they did allow them to climb out windows and those are grandfathered in. >> as bill mentioned, there's an important part of the codes, they are not retroactive. you had to bring them up to today's standards. it's allowed to be maintained in the original construction. that's one of reasons we have old fire escapes. they are not required to be upgraded. >> if this was built today, a fire escape would not be allowed. they do not meet the second

means of egresscode. >> but in all the existing ones like this one, you have to maintain them and keep a second means. according to the codes the building was built under. we are allowed to have fire escapes in existing buildings to provide a new exist from a historic building. it specifically allows fire escapes. we are allowed to have fire escapes for new exits. it's under some circumstances >> right. r3. one and 2 family homes. even new ones, which is not under the jurisdiction of the fire department. we will allow new buildings to have fire escapes if they can show reasonable standard for why they cannot put in a conforming stair sway.

fire escapes are essentially providing a legal second stairway. it's not quite a second stairway. that's 60 to 70 degrees. the fire department does to the agree and the more hazardous. >> if it was built, we allow you to maintain them. >> speaking of maintenance. we will get to maintenance later. we have people that do fire escape maintenance. going back to talking about the elements, we have access to the fire escape and then we have a fire escape balcony, they need a balcony to get access. you don't climb out directly on to a ladder.

for one and 2 family dwellings, but there are very few of them. we had an exception under there for no balconies. they are almost always required >> jomes are not allowed. they are pole ladders and they open up into a vertical ladder, their product lists doesn't require a balcony. we made a decision that is not even close to provide equivalency to a stairway. how many people. >> yeah, we have a question over here >> what year was this law changes and fire escapes required >> the question was, at who

point was the regulations change from allowing fire escapes to second stairs? >> that would be under the fire departments jurisdiction. >> it was actually within the last 10 to 15 years. i started 12 or 11 years ago and there was improvement plans with fire escapes. it came from the state. state farm was the one that came out and said, no no ones. >> yeah. so it's pretty recent. i can remember. i'm not that old. >> you're not. you are a young guy. so we have balconies, i handed out to you a whole set of technical standards. we will not go through that unless you have questions. if you are watching this and you want a copy, call us, our

number is 558-6025. we have the ladders that connect to the next balcony, those are regulated under the local, administrative bulletins and there's retroactive provisions in the state building code about how they have to be. >> the angle and width. i believe that's all covered in the handout. >> typically san francisco fire escapes and we will see, had angles of somewhere between 60 and 72-degree ladders. i can't from this angle tell what that is. the state has made it clean that 60 degrees is what they consider to be the maximum safe angle. most of the existing ones are

steeper, up to 72 degrees. and these hand rails and they step down on to a landing and you walk around and go down. at the bottom, this is the way to get to the ground. this is great. this has something called a counter balance ladder. it means that as you walk down to the bottom of the fire escape, there's a ladder sticking out horizontally. it will go down because there's a weight. >> it doesn't go all at once. >> so counter balance ladders are what the code currently require. but as we walk around, you will see many of them don't have counter balance ladders, they have drop ladders and

accordians and all that. this is an excellent type of ladder. you can see from the end of counter balance ladder, there's a chain. if you follow the chain up. it goes up to a pulley and down the other side to a weight. can you see that? the big weight is the counter balance weight and the code prescribes how many force it will take to operate that counter balance. >> is there a maximum height? >> yes. there's a maximum and minimum. >> it's in the handout >> ladder xdto the ground. on page 6, 2.7. a permanent, 50 pounds. 150 pounds 1 quarter of the way will start to swing slowly down.

and no fire escapes will be less than 14 feet above the sidewalk. when any part falls away, it has to be 14 feet. >> the top ladder too, that's a straight ladder. that's for fire department use. that's not for somebody fleeing a fire. you are supposed to come down. we use these things as a second way to get up. we like this, because we can run up those things. we don't have to go in the building. the stamp pipes are on there. or a wet stand pipe. actually for us, it's a convenience. it's a goose neck ladder over the top.

but, once again, that's for fire department use. not for civilians. we can always get a ladder up and get them off. i have done that frequently. that's something that happens frequently in the city. >> you don't need a ladder from the roof in it's less than 4 and 12. you need to have a ladder. >> once again, the fire department shouldn't be up there. we are going to walk through this and cross otis street. we will look at sand types and some of the other stuff. >> okay. this is,