Fire and Audience Safety in Nightclubs

I went to a nightclub / restaurant tonight to get a bite to eat, and they had me seated upstairs in a balcony area that overlooked the main level of the nightclub.  Just as I was getting ready to leave, I went to go down the staircase that I had originally come-up, only to find that it was blocked with a portable sign that read:  "Stairs Closed" hand-scrawled in chalk.

There were no other instructions, signs, arrows . . . nuttin!  And the  EXIT  sign above the 'closed' stairs was still illuminated, beckoning all to "come-hither".

I look over the railing back towards the bottom of the staircase, and I see that the club has cordoned-off what was the main entrance to the club, and a band is loading-in their stuff.  The usual junk is piled every which-way: drums, speakers, guitars, mic stands, road cases . . .

Huh?  I look again, a sure enough, my eyes are not fooling me, they have removed the host stand and they are using the main entrance to the club as the stage.  I can see the glowing red  EXIT  signs over the doors.  I look around upstairs and I do find another exit, although it's not well-marked. So this means that 1/2 the upper balcony audience may have to go down the other stairs, and 1/2 may have to find their way out through the adjacent bar area (again - the  EXIT  sign in the adjacent bar area is NOT visible from the show room balcony seating area).

Next, I go downstairs to get a better look.  Once there, I see that at the bottom of the 'closed' staircase (which ended right at one of the two front doors), they had amplifiers and junk stacked in the travel path.  So I look around some more.  To the other side of the other main entrance / exit door there was a doorway that went into a souvenir shop at the time I came in to dine.  The souvenir shop had another exit door to the street, but now it was closed-off and inaccessible.  I moved away from the band's makeshift performance area and I found a passage out to anther adjacent part of the bar, it has an  EXIT  sign, but the lamps are burned-out, and the passage is circuitous and poorly illuminated.

I follow that passage into the adjacent bar chamber, and I can see two possible egress routes.  One has a vestibule with another door leading to the outside, but the  EXIT  sign for this door is only visible to about 1/2 of the room, or less.  I walk closer to this exit door and gradually the overhanging soffit that forms the vestibule area around the door reveals that there is an  EXIT  sign above the door.  Mystery solved!

Final count:  One functional exterior EXIT from upstairs (sign not visible from the balcony audience area), Two functional exterior EXITS from downstairs (one of which the sign is mostly obscured, neither of which are visible from the central audience area for the make-shift stage).

This means that a space that had SIX exits during the day (a light density crowd, mostly people dining) when the Fire Marshal visited and there was a lot of outside light filling the space through the windows; and only had THREE working exits at  night  when the patrons are highly inebriated and more densely packed.   All this on a Friday night in a college town . . .

Tread Lightly - and don't bust your butt doing it

I continue to find more and more amazing steps and stairs both backstage and in the audience chamber that don't comply with ADA and NFPA Life Safety Code requirements for clearly marking the edges of steps.  sMany of these are in brand new buildings - why are code inspectors and architects not addressing this?

The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) places great emphasis on the need for people to clearly see the edges of floor transitions.  The ADA guidelines and rules are not just about preventing and marking bumps under wheelchair wheels!   It is about all of us needing to see under low-light conditions, and these conditions occur in many places outside of the theatre, too.

• When light levels are low our vision becomes monochromatic (black and white, or really shades of gray), so there is less information for our brain to process.  Strike One.
• We usually don't look directly where we are going to step, we rely on our peripheral vision, which is much less detailed than our central cone of vision.  Strike two.
• Where we step is largely governed by out sense of where we think our feet are going, and a large dose of trust that the destination is safe (i.e. flat, level, and large enough to stand upon).  If it's not, then Strike 3.

  What you (don't) see above is the two steps leading down from a sort platform stage into the front cross-aisle.  And no, the dark-gray to light-gray transition is not the step.  It's like (not) seeing a polar bear in a snowstorm.  And that is with the houselights UP.  Imagine this in the dark with black and-white vision . . .

At left is a stairwell in the catwalk system.  The picture was taken with a flash so it appears much brighter than the actual working space.  Black steps with no contrasting edges, and the step treads are only about 8" front to back, not hardly enough to plant your foot on when you are going up them in a size 11 work boot, and very difficult to get a feel for when descending in the dark - your toes want to fall right on over the edges that you can barely see.

The diamond plate tread pattern can be helpful if you have a coarse tread work shoe, but if there is very much dust build-up it can still be quite slippery.

One way to retrofit steps for traction and visibility is to add a stair nosing assembly that has both traction grit and a  photoluminescent  strip combined.  The GBC ST-1001 Bull Nose Stair Nosing is a good example of this type of product.

GBC makes another product that has a slide-in media slot that can be used for decorative inserts or possibly a paid advertising space and generate revenue resource for a venue.