Firefighter Matt Scallan from Escambia County Engine 19 sent in this photo. He discovered this confusing situation during a prefire plan. Check out the supplemental page for more details.
7 thoughts on ““These High-Rise Gigs Give Me The Creeps””
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This situation is more common than you think. I have been in many buildings where they call the ground floor the first floor then have a seperate 1st floor. Some have even had a mezzanine between the two. Frequently this mezzanine is not easily distinguishable from the exterior.
I also had a bank that had two elevators side by side but only one went to the penthouse suites. You could not tell by looking (the shaft went to the penthouse level and had hoistway doors).
Don’t for get about the “13th” floor that may or may not be counted.
Besides preplanning, is is a good practice to have one of the initial crews go to an upper floor window and somehow indicate to the command post that this floor is the reference point. I once saw a picture from Los Angeles (not sure if it was city or county) that they hung a large sign in the window.
From this reference point you can count up floors to the fire and coordinate known floor numbers.
As for the situation where stairwell doors and elevators do not match, that seems like a code enforcement issue that we should push due to FF safety and survival.
First things first LOVE the title. Thats a quote I use all the time. Some high rises are very confusing. We have a couple. In one when your in the stair case the floors are not labeled so you have to keep count. We have lost count many a time and you don’t realize it till you are down the hallway to the first apartment. In my district a law was passed that all private homes front and rear must be labeled with number, I am now pushing for these stair cases to be labeled as well. And there is on thing worse then a high rise job and that is vertically venting on you gotta know what your doing.
To kind of go with Evan this really comes down to getting your Fire Prevention/Inspection people more pro-active when these structures are being built or during inspections to talk to the building owner/management and address a situation like this. Regardless if its interior or exterior labeling/signage we need to make sure that its as “firefighter proof” and as I always say “Is not that complicated at 3am when I only have one eye and half a brain working”.
Ran across a similar scenario the other day while doing some Pre-Fire Planning in my area. A new three story building with a parking area underneath. We came in on the ground level and did some walking around, checking out the construction,etc. Took a walk up the stairs to the second floor and came across the elevator… marked “3”. I looked at my crew and said “Am I missing something here?” A walk up to the third and final floor, marked “4”. The parking garage, below grade, was marked “1”, street level, “2”. Not as confusing as Escambia’s building, but confusing none-the-less.
Just got back from vacation in FLA. Stayed in a six story condo on the beach. Unit number 843. Building 8,Floor 4, and unit 3 right? Building 900. All of the buildings were 100 off. Building 700 contained all 600 series condos. I must have given at least 15 people directions and I have never been there! I hope the local Brothers know the complex!
As a Battalion Chief and an incident commander, this is exactly why I do not like to use the floor of the fire as a division or group ie: Division 7 for ops on the 7th floor. I prefer to tell units to go to the “fire floor” or the “floor directly above the fire”, to give two examples. This causes much less confusion for the company officers on the fire ground and I know exactly where I have my units operating at all times. Let’s stay safe out there!
This is the main reason we dont use the elevator, even for fire alarm calls in high rises. One way to not have the elevator door open on the fire floor is not take the elevator.