Getting Out Alive Has Become Easier

A New Industry Standard Is Revolutionizing Evacuation Planning...
(and Clarion helped write it!)

The Reason

Time is of the essence when you need to escape from a building that's on fire, or during an earthquake or other crisis situation. Every second counts. Clearly communicating the proper evacuation path options is essential to improving the "speed of egress," a term used by fire protection researchers to measure the movement of people during an evacuation. Lives are at stake. Whether it's the MGM Hotel fire, The World Trade Center on September 11^th, 2001, or the many areas of the world hit by earthquakes every year, a basic safety requirement is for people to be able to evacuate buildings quickly.

The New Standard

The International Standards Organization (ISO) recognized this need and work began in 2004 in ISO Technical Committee 145 on a new standard for globally standardizing the format and content of building evacuation plans. The goal: A uniform worldwide visual system for communicating escape routes so people can easily locate themselves in relation to the building they're in and then to understand possible escape routes from that point forward. Whether it's a hotel room, office building or residential condominium, this is information that is essential to saving lives in times of crisis.

As the head of the U.S. delegation to the ISO safety sign standards committee,* Clarion took part in developing this new ISO standard. Clarion's president, Geoffrey Peckham, participated with a dozen of the world's safety sign experts from Japan, Great Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Norway in writing ISO 23601: 2009 Safety Identification - Escape and evacuation plans. This ISO working group of experts spent the better part of three years writing ISO 23601, with the initial working draft efforts led by Mr. Peckham. "It's a grueling process, and yet the results of our work are standards that are vitally important to improving the global communication of safety," Peckham said.

The main purpose of this standard is to define a uniform look and a uniform set of content for escape plan signs, since the aim of these signs is to serve as a means to train people about the location of escape routes in buildings so that in emergency situations, routes are clearly and easily understood by building occupants.

How to Order

Each Clarion escape plan sign is part of a system of signs that must be carefully thought out prior to executing drawings and final sign designs. Our design department and standards compliance staff can assist you with understanding the options you have for these important signs, the format choices, information requirements, required artwork file formats, and how best to proceed with quantifying your order. Give us a call, 800-748-0241, and we'll walk you through the process so the end result will be a set of signs that will do their job of saving lives in times of crisis.

Installation and Use

Escape plan signs are meant to be posted in key locations...next to elevators, near stairs, outside and inside large assembly areas, as well as smaller venues, such as on the inside of hotel guestroom doors. It should be noted that a building's escape plan signs are meant to work in tandem with the buildings egress path marking and safety sign systems so that hesitation is eliminated as much as possible along the escape path. For example, the visual cues provided by the building's photoluminescent path marking strips and step and handrail markings, along with the building's floor identification, fire extinguisher, fire hose, AED and safety equipment location signs (Figures 2 and 3), will help to delineate the evacuation route in dark conditions. If buildings implement what is now considered best safety practice in terms of egress path marking (Figure 4), people escaping buildings will follow the installed low-located egress path markings and signs - markings and signs that reaffirm the information shown on the escape plan signs, thus giving people a clear sense of the direction to the nearest exit.

Considering that safety and security are paramount issues in buildings today, these signs are a critical component of every facility's risk management program. People need to be made aware of how to escape a building should a crisis occur and these signs give building owners and managers the means to clearly convey this information. Notably, these signs (along with the evacuation training that occurs with the facility's employees) also provide a means to shift a measure of responsibility to the individual occupant for evacuation, thereby minimizing the building owner's/manager's risk of liability. Not providing escape route information to building occupants risks the accusation of a "failure to plan" - a new form of negligence that is being developed in U.S. courts since the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters.

Training

The training provided by escape plan signs is meant to occur in non-emergency times - functioning much like the instructions given by flight attendants to passengers on airplanes to locate the nearest exit to their seat prior to take off. Escape plan signs give people the means to locate exit paths in buildings so they are aware of this critical information ahead of time should a crisis occur.

Summary

Given the serious safety implications inherent with escape plan signs, implementation of the new globally standardized sign system is critical to making the world a safer place. Like the egress systems now in use in New York City, escape plan signs will shortly become part of the tool box for safety conscious forward-looking building owners and managers.

* Since 1996 Mr. Peckham has led the U.S. delegation to the ISO committee, formally known as ISO/TC 145 Graphical Symbols, and to the subcommittee in particular that wrote this standard, Subcommittee 2, Safety identification, signs, shapes, symbols and colours, working group 1.