NFPA Journal - July/August 2019 - 58

call for help, it's unclear whether compliance with NFPA 101 has improved.
Harrington, for one, has doubts
that it has, since a high level of ignorance seems to persist over what
systems are actually code compliant.
"I'm guessing a lot of installations
that are not compliant with NFPA 101
are happening in escape rooms," he
said. Magnetic locking systems with
a button or switch to unlock the door
aren't completely disallowed by the
code, Harrington explained. But in
a non-specialized occupancy like a
psychiatric ward or prison, to be compliant they require redundant means
of functioning, such as a sensor that
unlocks the door when somebody
walks in front of it. They should
also be connected to a building's fire
alarm and sprinkler systems to unlock
when either of those systems activate.
The provisions related to such door
locking systems appear to be "widely
misunderstood and misapplied," Harrington said.
Still, the most dangerous escape room
scenario, in which players are locked in
with no way out but to win the game or

call for help, seems to have dissipated
globally in the past few years.
"For example, in the Toronto market,
players are not allowed to be [completely] locked in," Nicholson said.
"This caused a number of rooms to
close, or to be altered to make spaces
where players could always get out."
Likewise, an article published by
the Irish Examiner in May found that
escape rooms throughout the European
country are generally seen as safe by
the fire service, and those that weren't
have been shut down. "In a good escape
room, the basic thing is not that you
are exactly escaping the room," one
escape room owner told the Examiner.
"It's about working out puzzles, be that
identifying a smell, putting a hard drive
in the right place, or working out a
mathematical puzzle. To be 'locked in'
is not necessary. We have emergency
exits and...players can leave the room
whenever they want."
But the Poland incident shows safety
improvements haven't been universal.
Following the blaze, Polish officials
ordered fire safety checks at all of the
country's escape rooms; more than 1,000

violations were uncovered, about half of
which related to issues with emergency
exits, and dozens of facilities were shut
down, the New York Times reported.
"The tragedy in Koszalin last week
shows that in some countries there is
still a way to go towards dealing with
this issue," an article published in the
Economist in January read. "Escape
rooms in Britain and America are safer:
fire regulations and laws prohibiting
kidnap mean that [participants] cannot
be locked in without an alternative
means to set themselves free. But that
is not true elsewhere in Europe."

AHJ CONCERNS PERSIST

Even with what Denley described as
the self-governance of escape rooms
occurring in the US, and with anecdotal evidence of increased escape
room safety abroad, AHJ involvement
through the process of building and
maintaining escape rooms is critical.
In 2016, escape rooms first came to
the attention of Vinny Quinterno, a fire
safety training officer for the Rhode
Island State Fire Marshal's Office
who serves on three NFPA technical

A BOOMING INDUSTRY

The world's first escape room opened in Japan in 2007. In the past five years,
the number of escape rooms operating around the world has grown significantly:

United States

United Kingdom

22

7

q

NUMBER OF
ESCAPE ROOMS
TODAY

2,300+
58 | NFPA JOURNAL * J U L Y /A U G U S T 2 0 1 9

NUMBER OF
ESCAPE ROOMS
IN 2014

q

NUMBER OF
ESCAPE ROOMS
TODAY

1,500+

Worldwide

NUMBER OF
ESCAPE ROOMS
TODAY

10,000+

GETT Y IMAGES

NUMBER OF
ESCAPE ROOMS
IN 2014
NFPA Journal - July/August 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2019
