NFPA Journal - Fall 2021 - 51

In Compliance
the design. Also, facility management
must be evaluated prior to building
occupancy. The LSE provisions
help facilitate better communication
among the designers and those who
manage the facilities after construction.
Similarly, the LSE provisions for
existing assembly occupancies include
requirements for building systems and
facility management assessments, a
life safety narrative, floor plans, engineering
analysis and calculations,
operational plans, and a systems reference
guide. Extensive details also exist
in Annex A material in NFPA 101.
Every assembly occupancy, new or
existing, is required to have a main
entrance/exit. This concept accounts for
occupants that are more likely to egress
a facility though the same door(s) they
used to enter it. In some cases, the
main entrance/exit in new assembly
occupancies must accommodate up to
two-thirds of the total egress capacity,
while in other assembly occupancies it
can account for half the total.
Where there is no well-defined main
entrance/exit, exits are permitted to
be distributed around the perimeter
of the building, provided that the total
exit width provides not less than 100
percent of the width needed to accommodate
the permitted occupant load.
This concept acknowledges that some
assembly occupancy buildings, such as
large sports arenas, have no welldefined
main entrance/exits; occupants
enter the facility via one of multiple
main entrances/exits. Under emergency
egress conditions, all occupants
will not attempt to use one common
group of entrances/exits, because some
occupants are familiar with certain
entrances/exits while other occupants
may be familiar with different
entrances/exits. In such cases, it is the
intent that egress width be distributed
among the various exits without any
one exit being required to provide 50
percent of the egress capacity.
In new assembly occupancies,
where the floor area of auditoriums
and arenas is used for assembly occupancy
activities/events, not less than
50 percent of the occupant load can
have means of egress provided without
passing through adjacent fixed seating
areas. This requirement of the
code is intended to reduce the amount
of merging and sharing of means of
egress by persons in fixed seating areas
and those who are forced to travel
from the arena floor up into the seating
sections to egress the building.
Regardless of where in the assembly
occupancy someone might be located,
access and egress routes must be mainNFPA
101 contains
provisions that help
ensure the safe and
orderly movement of
crowds during an
emergency. When
these protocols
and features are
neglected, it can have
a drastic impact on the
efficiency of egress.
tained so that crowd management and
security personnel, as well as emergency
medical personnel, are able to
reach any individual at any time without
difficulty.
Emergency Action Plans (EAPs) are
also critical components of life safety
in assembly occupancies. These plans
must include a minimum of 18 items
as listed in NFPA 101. The facility's
EAP must be submitted to the AHJ for
review and should be reviewed and
updated as required by the AHJ.
Finally, all assembly occupancies
must include a minimum of one
trained crowd manager or crowd
manager supervisor. Where the occupant
load exceeds 250, additional
trained crowd managers or crowd
manager supervisors are required
at a ratio of one for every 250 occupants.
Those designated as a crowd
manager or crowd manager supervisor
must receive approved training
in crowd management techniques,
and they must also understand the
required duties and responsibilities
specific to the venue's emergency plan.
The procedures for providing trained
crowd managers must also be part of
the written emergency action plan.
Managing crowds is critical to occupant
life safety during a fire or other
emergency. Active and passive fire
protection systems, recognizing and
mitigating risk, applying special building
design features, and a proactive
plan and implementation for crowd
management and emergency procedures
are all important components of
a crowd-management strategy that will
help ensure occupants at large-capacity
venues remain safe and under control
during emergencies.
Kristin Bigda is technical lead for Engineering
Technical Services at NFPA. NFPA members and
AHJs can use the Technical Questions tab to post
queries on NFPA 101 at nfpa.org/101. To follow
the progress on the upcoming edition of the code,
visit nfpa.org/101next.
NFPA 99
Life safety in
health care occupancies
Fire protection
for hyperbaric
facilities in hospitals
By Brian O'Connor
I
n recent months there
have been several major
hospital fires around
the world related to the
treatment of COVID19
patients. These events all involved
the delivery of oxygen to patients and
underscore the reason oxygen must
be handled carefully in health care
environments.
Many of the safety considerations
related to oxygen delivery also apply to
hyperbaric chambers, enclosures that
allow patients to breathe pure oxygen in
a pressurized environment. Hyperbaric
chambers are typically used to treat
decompression sickness, but they have
an array of other applications; studies
NFPA .ORG/JOURNAL * NFPA JOURNAL | 51
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NFPA Journal - Fall 2021

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