Most of us make a careful note these days of where the stairwells are in a high rise building. It’s our modest and sensible reaction to the events seven years ago this week. If anyone had forgotten the 9/11 images, the GOP Convention helpfully reused them as a political reminder that the attack occurred on their watch.
You might think the federal government is interested in increased safety in big buildings, many of which house government workers, as well as the safety of the millions who don’t work for the government.
But today we learn that the General Services Administration, the government’s landlord and property manager, is opposed to safety improvements that would require better fire proofing, more stairwells, and something as simple as glow in the dark light strips inside the stair towers.
The General Services Administration, which serves as the federal government’s property manager, is now opposing the tougher standards, even though they were based on a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which issues recommendations for safety standards after investigating fires and other building catastrophes.
“It does not take a NIST report or a rocket scientist to figure out that requiring additional exit stairs will improve overall occupant evacuation times,” David Frable, a General Services Administration fire safety engineer, wrote in a petition asking the International Code Council to rescind the changes, which go to a vote next week. “The bigger question that needs to be answered is at what economic cost to society?” (New York Times)
Perhaps the better question is what the social and economic costs are when thousands of people lose their lives in a terrorist attack; the impact on extended families, on communities and on society overall. Surely this exceeds the property loss, which is, as we all know, covered by insurance.
“It is unbelievable to me that our tax dollars are being spent to fight safety improvements,” said Glenn P. Corbett, an associate professor of fire science at John Jay College in New York City. “They are trying to subvert necessary change.”
Considering how much of American taxpayers contributions are being sent to Iraq without much oversight on how it is spent, the impact of the cost of creating safer high rise buildings is a pittance for the safety of Americans at home.
Jake Pauls, a code consultant specializing in stairwell safety, said he understood that the World Trade Center was a singular event. But calamities do happen — be it a terrorist attack, a blackout, an earthquake — and skyscrapers often do not have sufficient systems to protect occupants or allow them to rapidly and safely evacuate, he said.
Mr. Pauls said he believed that a bias against regulation was wrongly driving the effort to repeal the tougher standards.
“It is basically a political game that is being played here,” Mr. Pauls said. “And I find it appalling.”
Of course, the GSA probably believes that the federal government, as it has been managed for the last eight years, can make positively sure that there will never be another attack. Or even a high rise fire started from an electrical short circuit or a cigarette in a waste basket.
Country First starts to sound more like Property First everyday.