[ExI] fire alarms

[spike at rainier66.com]

You have heard my rants on fire alarms: those were required by code in homes
long after new construction makes most house fires very rare.  Just the code
to require drywall everywhere caused homes to become so flame-resistant that
traditional fire trucks are now mostly very expensive ambulances that are
deployed to little old ladies having trouble breathing.  In the old days, a
lotta people smoked tobacco.  This is now rare and house fires are now
seldom seen.  The batteries run low in those smoke detectors, and when they
do, they chirp, which means homeowners get up on a chair to try  to take
them down, and sometimes they hurt themselves or worse, so now in some
cases, the smoke detectors introduce more risk than they retire.

 

It occurred to me that public buildings have also become quite fire
resistant.  But the old style of one fire alarm causing evacuation of a
couple thousand students everywhere across campus still exists.  Since a
fire cannot really spread all that far, we might now argue that the
old-style universal fire alarm evacuating the compound is an example of a
safety feature which introduces more risk than it retires, because a school
shooter can set off an alarm anywhere, get everybody out where he can bang
away at them.

 

spike

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