Building evacuationAn elevator tech that could save lives in a high-rise fire
When there’s a fire in a high-rise building, safety rules dictate that you don’t take the elevator. You head for the stairs instead. But what if using the elevator could actually be the fastest – and safest – way to evacuate a building on fire? Seventeen years after 9/11, an Israeli startup is testing its solution to turn the elevator into a traveling ‘safe room’ that can facilitate rescue operations.
When there’s a fire in a high-rise building, safety rules dictate that you don’t take the elevator. You head for the stairs instead. But what if using the elevator could actually be the fastest – and safest – way to evacuate a building on fire?
Salamandra Zoneis an Israeli startup that wants to make it possible for people trapped in a burning building to flee using the lift. Today, elevators automatically shut off if they detect a fire because the poisonous gases released from the fire can quickly overwhelm the elevator cab.
Indeed, some 95 percent of deaths from building fires are not caused by getting caught in the flames but from inhaling carbon-based gases and other byproducts of the fire.
Those same gases also fill the stairwell, making it just as toxic as the elevator cab and even more dangerous when a panicked office building’s workers crowd into a congested space all at once.
Salamandra Zone’s solution: Don’t shut down the elevator. Rather, turn the cab into a traveling “safe room” that can facilitate rescue operations.
Salamandra Zone’s main product under development, B-Air, is a small box placed on top of an elevator cab. It has two functions.
First, it converts toxic gases into breathable air in nanoseconds. Second, it adds a high-powered fan to the roof of the cab, which pushes cooled air into the elevator and prevents smoke from entering. It works even when the elevator doors are open. B-Air has a backup battery providing at least three hours of operation.
“High-rise buildings are very vulnerable,” Salamandra Zone COO Gil Tomer tells ISRAEL21c. “Staying in place and waiting for the firefighters to rescue you is not an option. The highest ladders in the world can reach only to the 12th floor.”
Modern high-rises soar dozens of floors, and sometimes over 100 — the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has 160 floors and 57 elevators.
And if you still need proof of how deadly high-rise fires can be, you only need to look back to June 2017, when a fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block in London, killing 72 people. Fire services told residents of the building to stay in their apartments and wait to be rescued. The advice was disastrous.
B-Air’s sophisticated sensors can detect the exact concentrations of the noxious gases outside. The unit contains a mix of its own counter chemicals intended to react instantly with the sensed gases and convert them
