A Risk Analysis That Cannot Be Overlooked
When building or renovating a facility operating in the tourism sector, operators rightly focus on guest satisfaction. Budgets of millions of liras are committed to dazzling lobbies clad in Italian marble, spa centers equipped with the latest technology, and elegant rooms. Yet when it comes to the building's behind-the-scenes lifelines, namely the fire escape routes, an unfortunate tendency to cut costs tends to emerge. In facilities where hundreds of people sleep, lodging in a building they do not know, the fire door requirement in hotels is not merely a tiresome bureaucratic procedure to be cleared in order to obtain an occupancy permit from the municipality or a license from the fire department; it is an immense legal and moral responsibility.
The Regulation on the Protection of Buildings from Fire sets out very clear and uncompromising rules for accommodation facilities. In the event of a possible disaster, the safe evacuation of guests who have woken in a panic from their sleep and are trying to find their way through a corridor where smoke makes it impossible to see depends entirely on the quality and equipment of the doors opening onto those stairwells.
The Panic Bar Mechanism: Allowing Escape Even When Locked
The most fatal mistake made with fire doors in hotels is chaining them shut or locking them with a padlock in order to prevent unauthorized entry from outside. A fire door may be entirely closed and locked against entry from the outside (the stairwell); however, exit from the inside (the corridor) to the outside must always be free with a single touch. The hardware that provides this is the "Panic Bar" system.
In our hotel-series fire doors, which we manufacture in compliance with international standards, a child or an elderly person weakened by smoke leaning lightly against the horizontal panic bar with their body weight is enough to make the door open outward. Even if it has been locked with a key from the outside, the mechanism instantly releases the lock when pressed from the inside. In a moment of panic, no one has the luxury of turning a handle or searching for a lock; the orientation is programmed entirely around leaning against the door and getting out.
The Operator's Legal Safeguard: Certification
When supplying doors to a hotel project, I always give managers this warning: In the event of a possible loss of life, the first place the prosecutor's office and fire inspectors will look is the EI60 or EI120 (60-minute or 120-minute integrity and insulation) certificates on those doors. Makeshift doors produced in a backstreet workshop, bearing no test approval from an accredited laboratory, leave the facility facing multimillion-lira compensation lawsuits and an irreversible loss of reputation. If you are hosting hundreds of lives, you cannot leave safety to chance or to cheap costs. Proper engineering is the invisible guardian of hundreds of sleeping guests.
