NYT, pg1: Evacuation Plans Due for High Rises in NYC (if under attack)

[DeepModem Mom]

Evacuation Plans Due for High Rises in New York City
By JIM DWYER

Published: August 5, 2004


More than 11 years after terrorists first struck at the World Trade Center, the city is still struggling to complete guidelines for evacuating high-rise buildings where thousands of workers would face vital questions of what to do if their skyscraper were to come under attack.

Under a new city law that takes effect at the end of September, though, the Fire Department is, for the first time, drafting rules for evacuations of large commercial buildings in case of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The purpose of the rules, officials say, is to require owners of big buildings to at last prepare detailed plans, train staff members and conduct full evacuation drills of the building every three years.

Until now, owners of tall office buildings in New York and most major cities in the United States had been required to do little more than organize fire drills. Tenants usually did not leave the buildings, or in many cases, even their floors. "This is a dramatic change in how we view getting people out of buildings that have fires but also non-fire-related emergencies, like explosions, biological and chemical releases, any hazardous materials," said Nicholas Scoppetta, the fire commissioner.

Yet the new drills - which gained yet another jolt of urgency with this week's terror alerts focused on landmark buildings in the city - will continue to put heavy emphasis on what the real estate industry is calling "invacuations." In those situations, tenants would not move outside the building, but simply a few floors away from the hazard or to a designated refuge.

That strategy, which dates to the early 1970's, is based on considerations of both safety and practicality, officials say. The stairways in a building or the streets outside could be more dangerous than staying put. Moreover, many New York skyscrapers built since 1968 simply do not have enough stairways to allow all the occupants to go down at the same time when emergency workers are coming up.

Even so, all those involved acknowledge that persuading people to remain inside a building that has been attacked or threatened has become much harder after the collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/nyregion/05evacuate.html