By Essie Osborn


New York City local law 26 was adopted by the City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings in 2004 with the intention of making high-rise buildings safer in the wake of the tragic events that occurred in September 2011. In order to comply with NYC local law 26, both retroactive and prospective safety requirements must be met. Lessons have been learned about designing buildings that won't collapse. Other lessons have focused on how to make it easier for occupants to evacuate buildings in an emergency.

Many of these new regulations involve improving signage leading to fire exits, independent power supplies for signs indicating where the fire exits are located and phospholuminescent markers of safety exits. These provisions were to have been implemented within two or three years following the announcement of NYC 26. Other measures, involving improved sprinkler systems, are to be in place no later than July 1, 2019.

As the 9/11 incident was unfolding, those occupants of the Twin Towers who were in the lower floors, below the floors that were impacted by the planes, had a high rate of survival due to the comparative ease with which they were evacuated. One of the findings that led to NYC 26 was that the planes had severed the pipes to the sprinkler systems.

Evacuation from the higher floors was further exacerbated by problems navigating to the fire exits. This is presumably the logic behind the mandates for signage, photoluminescent markers and powered exit signs. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), the architectural firm that is designing the rebuild, is pioneering a novel elevator-assisted evacuation system that will facilitate the evacuation of people on the highest floors.

These innovative, elevator-assisted fire evacuation systems are controversial, to say the least. Trying to convince a work force that has been inculcated since elementary school to avoid using elevators in an emergency situation that this is safe will be an uphill struggle. The world will be watching high-rise structures such as the Burj Kalifa in Dubai, where such as system has recently been implemented. Similar thinking is also being considered for a skyscraper in South Korea.

Skyscraper architects in America are looking outside the country for ideas on how to make tall buildings safer. One such strategy involves the design of wider staircases so that more people can move out faster. Another strategy, borrowed from British builders across the Atlantic, is to build designated staircases for emergency services personnel.

Of course, New York is not the only city that is learning lessons from 9/11 and working to make skyscrapers safer for occupants. As if California doesn't have enough to worry about designing high-rise buildings that can withstand the dreaded massive earthquake, Los Angeles has also been taking another look at safety and security.

The world will never be perfectly safe. Even if the ultimate high-rise can be designed that will not collapse, at least before everyone has left the building, there will be new sinister threats to take the place of high-rise fires.




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