Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

In Japan, occupants should usually escape by stairways, not by elevator cars in case of a building fire. However, it is reported that occupants used elevator cars for evacuation in several major fires such as the Hiroshima Motomachi High-rise Apartments Fire that occurred on October 28, 1996 in Japan. Moreover, the demand for evacuation by elevator cars has been growing especially after the WTC collapse on September 11, 2001. In this context, we developed an elevator evacuation model to simulate evacuation completion time by multiple elevator cars. Moreover, we conducted case studies with this model to examine merits and demerits of evacuation by elevator cars in consideration of the influence of smoke. Main parameters are vertical travel time and waiting time for elevator cars. As a result, we found that elevator evacuation might be more effective than stairways evacuation under certain conditions such as a 57-story high-rise building with 32 elevator cars and 2 stairways based on an existing high-rise building in Japan.