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cthulu2016

(10,960 posts)
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 06:56 PM Jul 2012

Why exit doors are often Alarmed

Last edited Thu Jul 26, 2012, 08:14 PM - Edit history (2)

You have a store. It has a front door where customers come in and out.

In a fire it is useful, and usually required, that you have an additional exit on the other side of the building. This makes sense because if the side of the building with the main doors is on fire everyone would be trapped and die.

In the everyday flow of business the rear exits are not needed. There is no reason for the public to use them. Hence extra exit doors typically open from the inside, but do not open form the outside.

They must open from the inside, and be unlocked from the inside. If there is a fire you cannot rely on someone being there with a key.

They are required to swing out and have a "panic bar" opening device so that if there is a crush of people pushing toward the door the bodies of the people in front will press the bar and the door will pop open. It is designed to be super easy to open from inside. That is fire safety stuff.

Now, when we see rear exits that are required for for fire safety they are often alarmed. This has nothing to do with safety. This is not required. This has to do with limiting people stealing things or running out on their tab at restaurants and such.

The rear exit is there because it has to be but the store doesn't want to pay someone to sit watching it all day. People enter and leave through the front doors and that is how the entire flow of the business is set up.

The alarm on an emergency exit door does not call the fire department. 90% of the time it just makes a noise. It is something a business choses to have on the door so they'll know if someone is hauling a bunch of merchandise out the back door. You must have the door but you are not required that it be alarmed. That is for your convenience in running your business.

In a store the public will typically never use the rear exit. It is only an escape in an emergency. Hence the name emergency exit. The fire department wants to be sure everyone can get out in a fire. The fire department doesn't care at all where people can exit when there is not a fire. It is the business that decides whether all the requisite exits will be used or not, day-to-day.

In a theater or a stadium the public does use the rear exits. It is intended that they use the rear exits. Even in a world without emergencies or fire regulations theaters would chose to have rear doors for traffic flow. Every one has to come in the front door on the way in because you must have a ticket to enter. But once you are inside, the theater has no particular interest in trapping you inside. You are free to leave by the most convenient exit.

If you have enough regular exits then you do not need any emergency exits. The fire department wants enough exits, in the correct places. They do not care how you label them. The fire department does not care if you leave all the exits wide open 24/7.

There seems to be some sense out there that theater doors are required to be alarmed. Not at all. It would be ridiculous to alarm doors that people are expected to use whenever they want. Movies theaters have always been aware that a person could buy one ticket and then let his friends in the back door. Back in the day some theaters got exasperated with that and chained doors shut, with the expected mass casualties from fires. Today theaters consider potential sneaks the cost of doing business. (The movie is being projected either way, so theater sneaks don't cost them money out of pocket.)

The cost of watching the exits (with a person or a machine) is much greater than whatever loss might come from theater sneaks.

Now, as for the theater in Aurora... there was no reason to have an alarm on the exit, which is there to be used. And there was no reason to have cameras on the exits. (Which would also require someone to watch the cameras.)

The only sensible reason to have security on the exits would be to prevent people seeing movies for free, and the theater is free to make a sensible business decision about whether they need such security.

It is not sensible, in Aurora, to have security on theater exits speciffically to protect the general populace from people coming in the exits. In practice, anyone can take a few loaded handguns into a theater through the entrance and walk down the aisle shooting people in the back of the head. Killing 12 people would be a simple matter. And that goes generally for anywhere people congregate.

The "protection" would have been put in place to apply to this one utterly freakish and unprecedented case where someone wanted to enter a theater playing a particular movie, in costume, carrying long guns, and thus chose to use the back door as nessecary to his particular fantasy.

Think of how many people he could have killed by shooting into the crowd lined up to buy tickets—all standing and much better light.

His use of the back door was to play out a speciffic bizarre staging of his fantasy. It was not nessecary to killing a bunch of people, which he could have done many places in many ways. It was necessary to killing a bunch of people with a batman movie projected behind him. To use long guns to kill people while they are watching a batman movie you do have to come in the back door.

Is that a reasonably forseeable risk?

Say that ten years ago Congress had required every movie theatre to spend x thousands of dollars to best protect the public from being shot in movie theatres. Even in that weird hypothetical, that money would have gone for metal detectors at the main entrance.

The sense that the theater must have done something wrong is irrational. It presumes that there must be fault attached to every bad thing. Every now and then a meteorite smashes through somebody's roof, and sometimes even injures somebody. It is incredibly rare. It is, however, not much rarer than movie theater mass shootings involving entrance through an exit door.

After such freak meteorite strikes nobody ever proposes that all houses should have steel roofs. It is obvious to everyone that it would be an absurd cost. But meteorites are the ultimate "act of god." We accept such long-shot events because there is nobody to blame, and nobody to sue.

And nobody (except perhaps Pat Robertson types) would ever ask what the home-builder had done to invite a meteorite strike.

This movie theater did not do anything wrong... unless we are going to demand surveillance and armed security in every place in America that people congregate, including all parks, all street corners, churches, grocery stores, malls, high school soccer games, children's soccer games, all beaches, all restaurants, all buses... it is an absurd idea in general and it should be obvious that it remains an absurd idea in specific.

(This is entirely unlike 9/11. People flying airplanes into buildings was a highly foreseeable risk because of the unique nature of airplanes. And, by the way, the only thing that went wrong on 9/11 was that airlines had not made it priority one that the passengers do not get to fly the airplane. Unlike a park or a theater, a plane is itself a weapon, and will kill everyone aboard simply by doing what gravity demands of it.)

Part of the reason for our litigious ways is that we have no safety net. The theater will be sued and they will pay some money out of court. And the victims who lack insurance will have their medical costs covered. That is how we operate. It seems terribly unfair that people get shot and the idea that people in such need and trouble should be cared for by the government is, for whatever reason, alien to America. The fact that many victims are uninsured is a problem with our whole system. I will not mind that the victims will get something because this is our system... a bizarre social welfare roulette wheel. I cannot see why the theater ought to be the one paying, but ultimately it is the cost of doing business, so that's fine. I just wish we didn't have to bet dumber in the process. In order for the victims to be compensated we have to pretend the theater was at fault... it is the only way to get money to the victims.
7 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Why exit doors are often Alarmed (Original Post) cthulu2016 Jul 2012 OP
Perhaps the doors Politicalboi Jul 2012 #1
You make a reasonable argument. JohnnyRingo Jul 2012 #2
Even if the doors were alarmed... -..__... Jul 2012 #3
Yes. He would have been aware of how movie theaters are. cthulu2016 Jul 2012 #5
Using movie theater fire exits jberryhill Jul 2012 #4
Suburban theater architecture plans a path... cthulu2016 Jul 2012 #6
Very well reasoned argument. Thank you! /nt gvstn Jul 2012 #7
 

Politicalboi

(15,189 posts)
1. Perhaps the doors
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 07:14 PM
Jul 2012

In theaters should have a timed alarm. When the movie is over, the doors alarm would not sound, and stay that way for 10 minutes. And having surveillance camera's at the exit doors wouldn't hurt either. But it's not the theaters fault for what happened. The victims should be able to sue their business owners insurance I would think for their injuries and other complaints.

JohnnyRingo

(18,580 posts)
2. You make a reasonable argument.
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 07:21 PM
Jul 2012

Last edited Thu Jul 26, 2012, 08:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Makes sense to me, and well written.

I recall when Kerry was running in 2004, he suggested that some terror plots are going to succeed no matter what we do. He was, of course, roundly berated by conservatives who apparently felt increasing security measures would absolutely prevent all attacks.

I agreed with John Kerry back then, and I believe if someone wants to kill a particular group of people, they just may be determined enough to succeed once in a while. Thank goodness their numbers are few.

Putting alarms and cameras on all theater exits because of an isolated incident is akin to making everyone remove their shoes at the airport.

 

-..__...

(7,776 posts)
3. Even if the doors were alarmed...
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 07:41 PM
Jul 2012

security cameras in place, someone guarding the door... it would have had no deterrent or be no obstacle to Holmes carrying out his crime; it would have been a minor inconvenience at best.

He could have waited until the movie was over and rush the door as people were exiting, or he could have simply stormed the lobby; perhaps resulting in even higher casualties.

If he was deterred or put-off by the theaters security measures, he could have just as easily chosen another target that didn't have any precautions in place.

cthulu2016

(10,960 posts)
5. Yes. He would have been aware of how movie theaters are.
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 07:50 PM
Jul 2012

He made his weird plan in the context of how movie theaters were. The idea that he would have made the same plan in this hypothetical world of high-security exits is nuts.

 

jberryhill

(62,444 posts)
4. Using movie theater fire exits
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 07:49 PM
Jul 2012

If I'm sitting more than halfway toward the front, I typically leave that way.

However, it does seem to be less common for people to do that, than it was a few years ago. Maybe it's a regional thing. Sometimes people I'm with, think there is something wrong about leaving through the fire exit. But, as you point out, a movie theater sells tickets to sit in a room, sells refreshments, and projects a movie. There is nothing to steal.

cthulu2016

(10,960 posts)
6. Suburban theater architecture plans a path...
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 07:56 PM
Jul 2012

Because of the commerce of tickets and snacks, the path from the parking lot to the movie is usually rather long and labyrinthine.

And you typically cannot park in front of the main entrance.

But leaving by almost any exit door puts you in the parking lot, away from the main entrance, which usually puts you closer to your car no matter where you parked.

It is by design.

Some theaters encourage you before the show to use the exits by the screen because the next incoming crowd must come in through the main doors, so the flow works better.

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