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EF24 The elevator drama

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Suicune:
Not really pleasing for these who feel extremely uncomfortable in elevators, like me. At least when I'm alone in them. Well, I deal with it and hope I don't get stuck xD

karpour:

--- Quote from: Futeko on 29.08.2018, 14:56:03 ---I would personally prefer to use stairs as well, but to the contrary of the Maritim, the staircases at the Estrel are (as far as I know) exclusively emergency exit stairs. It means that for safety (and legal) reasons, you should not use them to go up - because in the case of an emergency, you don't want to slow down the evacuation of people due to groups of other people going up.

As I understand, it's all right to use them to go down though (because then you're anyway in the proper direction of the flow should an emergency arise). But for going up, we have to bear with the elevators :)

--- End quote ---

In the Maritim we also used the fire escape stairs which made it technically "unsafe", yet it somehow worked. And in the end after endless elevator troubles, the Estrel also opened the staircases, violating the very same argument.
They better find a *good* solution for this, because otherwise it'll be even worse next year.

Futeko:

--- Quote from: karpour on 29.08.2018, 18:12:10 ---In the Maritim we also used the fire escape stairs which made it technically "unsafe", yet it somehow worked. And in the end after endless elevator troubles, the Estrel also opened the staircases, violating the very same argument.
They better find a *good* solution for this, because otherwise it'll be even worse next year.

--- End quote ---

The Estrel made the stairs available to go up to floors 1 to 6 after 2 out of the 3 Wing 4 elevators went out of order, as a courtesy to us and in order to avoid having the situation spiral out of control. That cannot be a "definite" solution for safety reasons. Should an incident happen, the fact that you saved 5 minutes by going up the emergency stairs won't hold much when there are lives in the balance.

I agree that the elevator situation is an issue, and I hope the Estrel will find a solution to mitigate it in the future - but sadly I don't think opening up the emergency stairs will be the answer.

Schorse:

--- Quote from: karpour on 29.08.2018, 18:12:10 ---In the Maritim we also used the fire escape stairs which made it technically "unsafe", yet it somehow worked. And in the end after endless elevator troubles, the Estrel also opened the staircases, violating the very same argument.
They better find a *good* solution for this, because otherwise it'll be even worse next year.

--- End quote ---

The Maritim had a complete different layout. All hallways of all floors are open to the lobby. So a firedoor doesn't even make sense. That's why all these doors had handles on both sides.

At the Estrel, every floor is a separate fire section. Well, even two, separated by the double wing metal doors that close in a case of fire. That means, a fire will be locked in those areas. The doors at the stairs have a knob on the stair side, so you can't accidently enter a burning area. The only way to leave the staircase is to the outside, and if you open that door, you raise the fire alarm.

As you can see, in comparison, the Maritim is a VERY unsafe building.

SiranaJHelena:
I have the strong feeling that "Well it worked at time X, so why can't we have it at time Y?" was exactly the reason why they tried to avoid opening the stairs in the first place. People act like safety regulations are only there to annoy people with super heavy doors and way too much bureacracy. "Why can't people just bend the rules? It's just stairs... When something happens, I'm sure we can all use the stairs like supposed to, we're not kids anymore." Well, that's not how it works.

It was really cool that during the critique panel at sunday morning someone from the Security team was sitting in the audience. When this topic was mentioned, she was so nice to explain to us what opening the stairs actually means, especially in an emergency. I don't remember everything, but it would e.g. require three or so specifically trained security members that are allowed and able to go to every floor and kick that small wooden block away from the door under these harsh conditions, so the door could actually close and do its job. And until they are there, it wouldn't, which is already a safety risk on its own. And that would be only one issue of many.

We are incredibly lucky that we've had 24 conventions so far without any kind of huge accident that made it necessary to follow any safety protocol for evacuating the whole buildung and I have the feeling, many people don't take a moment to consider this. Heck, (as far as I know) we still have a bodycount of 0 people, no matter if they could have died of overheating, an accident, wrong medication, an attack, a suicide attempt or someone else's stupidness. Yes, it is annyoing if you have to wait two hours to get to your room or miss a panel because you can't leave your floor. It is even dangerous if you're stuck in the elevator and are already in a bad condition because you had your fursuit one for three hours or have a panic attack. But please keep in mind that an elevator that is stuck is a problem that is still solved way more easily and way less risky than an actual emergency where 2000+ people's lives are at stake and every minute counts.

In my opinion there are two solutions: People stopping jumping AND the Estrel replacing these elevators from the stone age or at least work at a serious improvement. I am no pro, maybe they are alreading doing as best as they can and use everything technology is able to do to reduce this problem. And let's face it: The amount of work the elevators have to do is different from other conferences/events, so the risk of something breaking is a bit higher. However, considering how little changes have been at other issues that are appearing for more than one year despite complains (dirty filter in the air conditioning, a broken lift for wheelchairs,..) I don't trust this theory without any doubt...

Nevertheless as annoying as it is: The EF staff can't rebuild the Estrel. They can't add stairs at the outside and they can't influence the laws of physics when it comes to the question how fire spreads. They can mention their concern towards the hotel - and I am very sure they are already doing this every year, and if you had a room there you can write a (polite) e-mail with a complaint as well. Many issues I heard in the panel I mentioned are things that in my opinion a hotel of his quality should provide/fix asap.
But please reconsider what it actually means to be in an emergency and 50 people can't get out because someone convinced them that hurting the safety rules for half an hour less waiting time would be necessary and worth it. Especially when you are about to say "They should just open the stairs."

Sorry for the sarcasm...

Edit: The one thing we can work on is a faster and easier way to call security/report it when you noticed someone jumping in the elevator, no matter if it got stuck afterwards or not. As far as I know the security hotline didn't work and the button for calling them via the app was very well hidden in 3-4 submenus. This is something to work on, so we can at least do our part of solving the problem.
Also maybe it would help if someone from the security would be so kind to explain a bit more detailed here or in a mail to every participant while ignoring the safety regulations and opening the door is a very bad idea? I'm sure it would clear up some confusion when people could see the big picture better. :) It wouldn't solve the problem but maybe calm down the situation a little bit.

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