STEEL fire doors that are supposed to give people at least an hour to escape a blaze can fail in less than 20 minutes, tests in France show. The results raise severe doubts about the reliability of the international standard for testing fire doors.
The doors are usually tested using a method laid down by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva. A section of the door is put in a furnace and the temperature gradually increased until it fails. Different types of fire door can then be categorised according to the time they take to fail.
Daniel Joyeux,…
