- Author
- Proulx, G. | eid, I. M. A. | Cavan, N. R.
- Title
- Human Behavior Study, Cook County Administration Building Fire, October 17, 2003 - Chicago, IL.
- Coporate
- National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
- Report
- RR-181; Research Report No. 181, April 2004, 92 p.
- Keywords
- human behavior | building fires | occupants | surveys | high rise buildings | fire fatalities | injuries | office buildings | training | evacuation | fire safety | fire drills | stairwells | fire alarm systems | elevators (lifts) | resuce | fire fighting | fire fighters | people movement
- Identifiers
- Cook County Administration Building Fire, 69 West Washington, Chicago, Illinois, October 17, 2003; study objectives; re incident; building and occupant description; research strategy; rvey analysis; floor plan for 12th floor; lobby floor plan; code book
- Abstract
- The fire in the 36-story Cook County Administration Building on Friday, October 17, 2003, resulted in 6 fatalities and a dozen people injured. Although such a catastrophic fire is rare in a high rise office building, it is essential to study this event in great detail to learn from this tragedy and make appropriate recommendations to minimise the likelihood that such an event should ever recur. This human behavior study examines accounts given by building occupants in order to enhance our understanding of the existing conditions in the building prior to the fire, past training and occupant awareness of the evacuation procedure. The study has two main objectives: first, to document the occupants' behavior and evacuation on the day of the fire, and second, to obtain information from all building occupants on their training and fire safety experience prior to the fire.