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Tall buildings can be seen as a challenge to fire safety standards, and elevators play an important role in such a statement. It was debated for more than two decades that elevators are not safe to use during a fire (Bukowski). Accordingly, the emphasis on fire safety can be explained through several factors. One factor can be seen through designing routes to access, where it is not expected that people will walk down to the exit in tall buildings. The latter emphasizes the evacuation time, as it was shown through the World Trade Centre attacks. At the same time, such difficulties can be seen through providing access to firefighters inside the building, which in the case of tall buildings is a challenging task as well. It can be seen that the focus on elevators is an important aspect in such context, where All of those factors and concerns considered in the of fire safety strategy for Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Considering the aforementioned characteristics of tall buildings, the fire safety in Burj Khalifa initially focused on two aspects, in addition to the general fire safety measures, which are the speed and the safety of evacuation. An important element in such a strategy was devoted to elevators and their construction. The risks with using elevators during safety are attributed to the that they can come to a stop for any number of reasons, trapping their occupants inside. In that regard, in addition to the building’s 57 elevators, a service/fireman’s elevator was constructed. Having a capacity of 5500 kg, it is the world’s tallest service elevator (CW Staff). Those elevators were divided into several banks, serving different use areas. In addition to the outstanding technical characteristics in the design of elevators along with other safety specifications, e.g. “375km of fire alarm cabling and 34km of chilled water pipes”, several design enhancements were considered for the fire safety strategy in Burj Khalifa, which were developed, implemented, and coordinated by Rolf Jensen & Associates, Inc (RJA), a US fire protection and security consultants (RJA) (CW Staff; RJA).
One security strategy was in enabling elevators in the building to operate in emergency mode during evacuation. Such a solution enables the fire department to operate all the elevators manually, an enhancement that enabled cutting projected evacuation time in half (RJA). Another unique solution can be seen through the integration of the areas of refuge. “Certain floors have been designed as safe areas, and RJA has consulted on providing special life safety features to protect these areas, such as a direct connection to stairs and pressurization to limit the spread of smoke” (RJA). In such a way, people could be relocated to safe zones without evacuating the whole building.
Finally, one of the unique strategies implemented in the building, and which are rarely used, was the integration of several cutting-edge solutions at once. For example, a passive protection solution such as the refuge zones between floors was combined with active protection, including the gravity-fed sprinkler system, a fire alarm system “designed to British standards with smoke detection provided throughout the building” (Evenson et al.). All of the latter was combined with an efficient Crisis Response Plan, with about 50 response procedures distributed along with five response levels, making Burj Khalifa a technical achievement in every way, including fire safety engineering.
Works Cited
Bukowski, Richard W. “International Applications of Elevators for Fire Service Access and Occupant Egress in Fires.” CTBUH Journal.3 (2010): 28-33 pp. Web.
CW Staff. “How the Burj Was Built”. 2010. Construction Week Online. 2011. Web.
Evenson, Jon M., et al. “Middle East Fire and Life Safety.” Consulting Specifying Engineer (2010). Web.
RJA. “Burj Dubai”. n.d. Rolf Jensen & Associates, Inc. 2011. Web.
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