Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

On November 17, 1998, a hotel fire broke out at Shirahama hot-spring resort, Wakayama prefecture Japan. When the fire broke out, there were 78 occupants in the hotel, but no one was killed or even injured fortunately. For purpose to find out factors of this safe evacuation, surveys in two styles were conducted on the hotel employees One in an interview style, asked about the serial property of the fire, and the other in a questionnaire style questioned about the employees' behaviors in the fire. In the former, the employees were individually interviewed about the conditions around them and their behaviors from when they noticed an unusual occurrence or perceived the fire to when they escaped to safe areas. As regards the latter, the questionnaire was prepared to clarify the employees'behavior patterns in the fire. The items of the questionnaire are: "attributes of respondents," circumstances when something for fire made them aware of an unusual occurrence,"" circumstances when they perceived the fire," "circumstances when they led and/or directed their guests for evacuation "and "circumstances when the they escaped." Each item contained questions relating to times, locations, factors and behavioral responses. In this report, behavioral responses of the employees and the guests in the fire are illustrated, and the reasons of the successful evacuation were examined,