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Keyes Q&A: Areas of refuge, partial O2 cylinders, and natural gas generators

Healthcare Life Safety Compliance, July 1, 2019

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

Editor’s note: Each month, Brad Keyes, CHSP, owner of Keyes Life Safety Compliance, answers your questions about life safety compliance. Our editorial advisory board also reviews the Q&A column. Follow Keyes’ blog on life safety at www.keyeslifesafety.com for up-to-date information.  

Area of refuge in a hospital

Q: We ask staff this question when we do environmental rounding: "Can you identify the closest area of refuge?" The answer we have used is "shelter in place," but I believe this may be misleading. Can you please provide a more accurate answer?

A: According to section 3.3.22 of the 2012 Life Safety Code® (LSC), an area of refuge is one of the following two things:

• An area that is a story in a building where the building is protected throughout by an approved, supervised automatic sprinkler system and has at least two accessible rooms or spaces separated from each other by smoke-resistant partitions (i.e., corridor walls)
• A space located in the path of travel leading to a public way that is protected from the effects of a fire, either by means of separation from other spaces in the same building or by virtue of location, thereby permitting a delay in egress travel from any level

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

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