Fire Science Show
Fire Science Show
235 - A Repeating Tragedy with Lazaros Filippidis
A fire in a public venue happened again. No, I am not talking about the one in Switzerland. Since the tragic New Year celebration, we had one more near-miss in Madrid on Jan 10th 2026... In fact, who knows how many we actually had? It is a tragedy that feels like it is playing on repeat...
In this podcast episode, we try to dig into why nightclub fires follow the same script decade after decade—what are the parts of the pattern, and what can we do through smarter design, honest modelling, and real enforcement. With guest Lazaros Filippidis from the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich, we map the chain of failure: combustible acoustic treatments under low ceilings, narrow or locked exits, stair “chimneys” that pull smoke toward escaping crowds, and furniture layouts that turn doors into traps.
We talk about human behaviour. People head for the entrance they know. They hesitate when cues conflict—especially if pyrotechnics were part of the show minutes earlier. Phones come out. People respond in such a way not because people are foolish, but because recognition takes time in loud, dark, crowded spaces. The fix isn’t shaming; it’s designing for how people really act: outward‑opening doors, multiple distributed exits, better signage, immediate lights up and music down, and staff who redirect flow on instinct.
For engineers, we go beyond textbook ASET vs RSET and show how coupled fire–evacuation modeling reveals the true picture as heat, irritants, and visibility degrade movement and decision‑making. We make the case for sensitivity analyses: add more patrons, block an exit, switch to ultra‑fast fire growth, drop a service trolley into a corridor, and see in what scenarios your modelling results collapse. We can find the bottlenecks, and if we do, we can fix them. With practical tools—from zone models to agent‑based simulators—you can find vulnerabilities before opening night and recommend changes that add crucial minutes or even seconds.
It was a tough episode to record, especially since there is not much new we have learnt about human behaviour or fire growth in such facilities... I hope this provides some food for thought and fuels future design considerations.
If you are interested in modelling done with buildingExodus, for which Lazaros is one of the developers, please go and visit the FSEG website.
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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. When I was recording the last episode of the last year on the New Year's Eve discussing the Hong Kong uh fire, I thought this is gonna be something that we will keep talking for weeks and weeks because that was obviously uh a very huge tragedy and a very medial fire. And then on the New Year's night uh the Swiss Cranz Montana nightclub fire happened and the whole media attention of the world has shifted towards that one. It's horrible how quickly uh we replace one horrible tragedy with another and how quickly those things shift. I've commented some on the Cranz Montana fire on LinkedIn. I'm not really used to comment on recent events, I'm not really that much seeking attention, falling to comment on the freshest and the biggest fires and don't feel the urge to be the first one to post about that. I rather have my my thoughts made up and provide you with some clean things I have processed in my head that actually can help us strive to be better. And so I have planned for this episode to prepare an episode that actually brings some value to the fire safety engineering community. And uh yeah, I've invited a nice guest, uh Lazaros Filippidis from the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the Greenwich University. Lazaros is a part of um Professor Ed Galea's group uh for ages. Uh I I've I remember he was helping me with building Exodus like 15 years ago. That's how long I've been professionally exposed to Lazaros. And it and since forever I know Lazaros was involved in evacuation modeling and uh and then his group is developing fire modeling software. So definitely that's a nice person to talk about this uh particular family of fires in the nightclubs. And yeah, what's kind of unfortunate, there's absolutely nothing new in this episode. Like in our discussion we are having with Lazaros, we just reiterate through some obvious elements that are not a surprise to anyone. They should have not been a surprise to anyone. And uh that that's perhaps the most horrible aspect of those nightclub fires, that there is nothing new in that. Like we know almost everything. We know 99% of stuff that should prevent us from you know having such a tragedy is happening, and yet they occur every few months somewhere in the world, uh, which is the horrible part of this story. So today's episode, not necessarily about the Kranz Montana fire, is not that we're gonna, you know, uh dissect the uh recent fire into smallest pieces and analyze what happened there. No, we we are trying to present you with a broader context of how fires in such venues look throughout the history and give you some ideas about how to think about uh the scenarios, the design scenarios, the evacuation scenarios in such venues in such a way that we strive to be better fire engineers and provide better fire engineering in the future. Not an easy episode, but I think an important one. I hope you enjoy it. Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode. Welcome to the Firest Show. My name is Wojciech Wegrzynski, and I will be your host. The Fire science Show podcast is brought to you in partnership with OFR Consultants. OFR is the UK's leading independent multi-award-winning fire engineering consultancy with a reputation for delivering innovative safety-driven solutions. We've been on this journey together for three years so far, and here it begins the fourth year of collaboration between the Fire Science Show and the OFR. So far, we've brought through more than 150 episodes which translate into nearly 150 hours of educational content available, free, accessible all over the planet without any paywalls, advertisements, or hidden agendas. This makes me very proud and I am super thankful to OFR for this long-lasting partnership. I'm extremely happy that we've just started the year 4, and I hope there will be many years after that to come. So, big thanks OFR for your support to the Fire Science Show and the support to the fire safety community at large that we can deliver together. And for you, the listener, if you would like to learn more or perhaps even become a part of OFR, they always have opportunities awaiting. Check their website at OFRConsultants.com. And now let's head back to the episode. Hello everybody, I am joined today uh by Lazaros Filippidis from University of Greenwich. Hello, Lazaros, good to have you in the podcast.
Lazaros Filippidis:Hello, Wojciech. Uh thank you for uh inviting me to your um forest science show.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Thanks, man. Uh when I was uh going through email uh prepping for this, I found our correspondence from 2012. That's how long I know you. You've helped me massively with Exodus. Uh more than 10 years ago, you know. Thank you very much for that. Uh I appreciate that. It was always uh reaching to you for the support was always great, and I'm really happy we can interact on a different note today. Indeed.
Lazaros Filippidis:And I think we've only met uh in person once.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, probably exchange like versions once.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, we'll exchange lots of emails and messages.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:This is hilarious. But uh anyway, the the topic I've invited you for is is not not as funny as our interactions because we're gonna talk about, I guess, a family of fires, and obviously the attention of the world was on the Kranz Montana fire just after the New Years, and uh this to some extent triggered this discussion. But there was another one, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Well, there are the many incidents that um follow the same kind of pattern, and uh there are lots of uh near misses that uh probably don't take up immediate time. The latest one that I've heard about was in uh Madrid in a restaurant where uh again fireworks ignited curtains. Fortunately, in that incident, uh they used the fire extinguishers and they put out the fire within seconds. So that was uh, as I said, a near miss. Nothing really happened. But it's the same kind of incident. You have fireworks in an enclosed environment with flammable materials that puts people at great risk. People that go to a place to have fun and not to be vigilant. They're not going they they're not entering, you know, um a chemical facility or nuclear plant where they know that okay, they have to be careful. They enter a restaurant, uh discotheque, a nightclub, so they forget about the problems.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, I mean when they see you know fires like the one that happened in Hong Kong, which obviously was a huge tragedy. When when I look at it, there are things that were not obvious. There is some interesting fire physics out there, there are things that I probably have never seen uh happen. When I even when I see things like uh King's Cross, that's that's some new physics, there's interesting interactions, like it's complicated. I mean, fire science is complicated, and many of those fires are very, very complicated. And and you know, the specific uh set of physical conditions that promote those fires are not that easy. And and so when I look at those you know, nightclub fires, there's no interesting fire physics to me. It's like a brutal compartment fire within in a compartment with a lot of people and most likely insufficient means of escape. It devastates me, really, because like I I I'm hopeless. Like I I I I don't know how what what more a fire engineer could do to to prevent those at large.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, indeed. I mean uh the examples you gave initially actually did provide new physics and new type there were new types of incidents. Uh but what we see with uh discotheques and nightclubs, it's a recurring pattern. Again and again we see the same thing. Uh small spaces, typically overpopulated, typically with uh limited escape routes. Uh sometimes they're even locked the escape routes. So to prevent people, you know, for uh getting out without paying uh what they bought, with uh typically badly installed uh flammable material and fire sources that shouldn't really exist within those venues, pyrotechnics and fireworks.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Let's try and go back in time. Um because it's not also a uh a new thing. Like those those fires happened throughout the history. Going back, like what will be the worst one? The coconut groove?
Lazaros Filippidis:Coconut groove, I think, is the worst one uh in 1942, with just under 500 uh fatalities and a few hundred injured people. I I think this was the deadliest, uh deadliest uh uh incident in history for a club.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Maybe maybe let's try to unwrap that one. Like do you do you know what happened there again?
Lazaros Filippidis:Well, there was ignition again of flammable uh decorations. Uh there were obstructed exits, locked exits. The incident actually led to the adoption of uh new fire safety measures. So based on that, the authorities designed new regulations. Um panic hardware to doors was uh uh became a requirement after that incident. Illuminated uh signs, I believe, became uh requirement after that incident. And uh there was I think a ban on uh some uh materials within within these establishments. But we see though with we see flammable materials appearing all the time.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So I guess there was like a small uh well quite large actually, space, because you have to have space for for a lot of people, uh, with uh most likely insufficient insufficient exit capacity. I mean, if you think about it, the architectural features uh of a nightclub or or a venue uh kind of promote this environment because you like you most likely want it to be dark, that's that's a theme. You want to have a control over uh who comes in, who comes out, and as you as you mentioned, they they pay. So this pathway is kind of closed. Um you probably don't want to have alternative pathways inside and outside. So people sneak around or and and do some perhaps ill illegal activities, uh which in uh well-refreshed venues sometimes happen. And at the same time, I think the ratio of height to the volume, I don't know even know if that metric exists, but they all seem not very not very high, not very huge venues, but just l large in space, right? Indeed, normally they would have low ceiling. I guess acoustics to some extent must promote that, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Probably uh normally you'd see low ceiling venues. Uh but as you said, normally and typically what you have is you'll you'll get um a managed ingress of people because they have to pay to get in. Uh and also because it takes uh this the this process takes over a long period of time, it takes maybe a couple of hours for everybody to get in. They don't arrive all at the same time. So for ingress, the the means of getting into the venues are sufficient. Then for security reasons, as you said, they do many times uh restrict quick ingress. But of course, uh in an emergency that's exactly what you want. You want you want to have access to appropriate number of uh escape routes. These escape routes must not be locked. In many cases, we we know that uh the windows were closed with uh and locked with uh metal grids so people couldn't escape. So, yes, while they are designed for a good flow of ingress, they're not definitely not designed for um efficient uh evacuation during an emergency.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And and another thing is the um acoustics, because like okay, people do those choices, a lot of those design choices, for a reason. And there there is actually a good reason why you want to have uh insulation on uh on your uh ceiling in in such a venue for the same reason why I have an insulated wall in the space where I'm sitting in here. Absolutely, uh reverbation and acoustical effects in because it's quite a large space. Like engineers should should understand that. If you have a space that has 30-40 meters length, that's uh the sound takes uh 0.1 seconds to travel that that length. The sound is not that fast, and and that creates a very annoying reverbation and acoustic effects that will be very obvious in a setting where people enjoy music. And this means that a space that is not acoustically insulated if you have a low ceiling, there's a lot of space to bounce from the sound. And if you don't have that insulation, the space will not fulfill its primary goal of delivering uh music to people as a a way of operating. I mean, because a lot of uh blame after those fires is of course that you can make this type of insulation without flammable materials and will reach the flammable materials in a second. But the point is like you need that, and and and the engineers and everyone around should should respect the fact that this is actually a quite important feature of such a facility.
Lazaros Filippidis:It's actually a requirement. I mean this is true. Uh you you need to have some type of acoustic uh insulation in these uh establishments that goes without saying. However, they have to choose appropriate materials that are fire retardant. And uh we know that in many cases this was not the case. For example, in the Station Night Club and the KISS Club, uh these materials were highly flammable, and they they ignited through pyrotechnics and fireworks. Um But yes, the engineer does do that uh you need to have you need to install acoustic insulating materials to enhance the experience of uh the patrons. That's why they go there. They go there to have fun, they go there to hear to listen to their music, listen to their favorite band, and of course all this adds up to the experience.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And and another uh aspect that that is quite typical for such a facility is and that that actually I think is outside of the engineer's ability to act, is is how the internal furniture is distributed among the places. I mean where the tables are, where the seats are, and and and how the venue operates every day. Because I also feel this is something out of control of engineering. I I design walls, I may design the main area, I may design the staircase. I can tell them where you can put tables, and I will most likely receive some kind of uh you know drawings that will show me the table layout.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, but you never know what's gonna happen. I mean, in in many cases, again, you can have a compliant uh structure, you can have a compliant building. But how the operators will actually furnish the venue, it's out of the control of uh the engineer. And in many cases, they do put tables that block the exits or restrict the effective width of the exits or the corridors. Well, they they want to make money at the end of the day, so they try to allow as many people in as possible. That is another issue.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Let's perhaps talk about bottlenecks and how bottlenecks work uh from the perspective of crowds and and uh evacuation. Because if you put too many elements in front of that or nearby the exit, you may not even block the exit, but if you create you know like a narrow corridor leading to an exit, you dramatically reduce the amount of people who can move towards the exit, etc. And I I think this bottlenecking problem is also a massive. Maybe you can comment on on how women the um exits lose their desired uh capacity, perhaps.
Lazaros Filippidis:Well, it all depends on uh the number of people you have in in the venue. So normally there are guidelines that uh d dictate the maximum number of people that you can have within a building. But of course, uh the behavior of the people plays a significant role. Now, when uh you have an urgent emergency situation and uh everybody urgently needs to evacuate, then obviously most of the people will try to go towards the exits. Now we know from re past research and literature that most people will try and escape through the entrances that they're most familiar with, and that's typically the entrance to the building. Uh in many cases they ignore the emergency exits. They may not be aware where these emergency exits are. Maybe they want they maybe the emergency exits are behind or within other rooms, which they don't have access to anyway, so they wouldn't know about them. So when you have a certain uh rush of people going to towards the same escape route, same exit, we have observed that uh the capacity is not enough. And we're not talking about um here we're not talking about drills. During a drill, people are more relaxed. The capacity seems to be uh appropriate for the population you have in your building. But during uh an emergency where you have fire products affecting you and you need to escape as quickly as possible, this creates bottlenecks. Uh usually creates bottlenecks at the exits because they're they're they're not they're not wide enough. And you have a rush of people of people that are trying to escape as quickly as possible.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Does the capacity of exit decrease when the when the density of population increases? I think that's the part of the fundamental diagram for doors, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, I mean you could you could you could say that. You could say that. I mean the greater the density, the uh the the more difficulty the people have to are able to move. The more difficulty they have to they can't move as easily as obviously as when the density is not as high.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And and and especially tragical when you have uh another bottleneck like a few meters ahead where where there's another group of people. And I think we've we've seen those horrible images. I think it was station nights that were something where people were trying to the station, yes. They they were literally in the doors and they were just stuck in the doors and then you were unable to exit. This is like really, really horrible.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, it it is because uh the the people are affected by uh the fire products. I mean uh all this insulating material, uh the acoustic form generates uh hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, uh carbon dioxide. Hydrogen cyanide is extremely toxic. And we're talking about sometimes seconds make uh the difference between uh life and death. So in many cases, uh unfortunately people reach the exit but they uh they become incapacitated at that location. And of course, then the next person that comes has difficulty to get out, then the next one has a greater difficulty to get out, and that's a cascating effect taking place at those locations. And and and letting me just add something else, and it's not just that, in some cases, outside the exit, there are barriers as well. And and I think in the station uh nightclub it was also elevated, so there were staircases on that elevated platform outside the exit. Uh that can cause extra problems as well, because that's another element that you have to get away from. And you're restricted there as well. It's not just you know uh level surface that you just get out and you can go away from the building. You have another obstacle to overcome. And I think it's the same uh in the in the recent uh Swiss uh club as well. Yeah, it's actually exactly the same. Yes, we had uh a staircase going downwards a bit. Once they exited from uh the building itself.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:At this point, I like struggle with one thing. Like, what would be a sufficient size of those doors? Because I I I you know I it's hard for me to imagine that I have a door of, let's say, whatever width one and a half meter, let's say I had, and that promoted um a catastrophe. Would this additional half a meter of the door width like really solve the case? Or I would need it like multiples of that. Is there a safe target?
Lazaros Filippidis:I think the idea is to have multiple escape routes as well, not just uh wider exits and unobstructed exits. Uh you need to have multiple escape routes. And further to that, the exits have to open outwards.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah. Not inwards. This is a very, very important point.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, I mean that is actually a a door that opens indoors will prevent uh efficient evacuation. It will actually be part of a problem.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:This is something uh that that especially in the tunnel space is quite challenging for us because we will always want to have uh doors opening outwards, but we have two tunnels to evacuate from each other. So uh and you cannot pick the lucky tunnel uh that has the correct one. So you have to basically have a full redundancy of all evacuation doors. So each tunnel has a main door that opens outwards to the another one. That's quite a big design struggle, but we we believe that this is uh this is necessary to promote good good evacuation. When I was I I I'm not aware how it works around the world, but I remember uh one day I've done um analysis for the Polish uh regulations because the Polish regulations connect the number of people in a room with uh with uh capacity that is expected, and we do that in 0.6 meter increments, so perhaps per every like you have a basic minimum, like let's say 1.2 meter, and then you add 0.6 meters for every every another 100 people. And what's interesting when you do the math, it converges at 180 seconds, you know. So uh you basically get up to a 180 seconds time that you need to evacuate this space, you add uh another meter, so it drops to let's say 150 and then then goes up all the way to 180 again. Yeah, yeah. So so I in in some way, yeah, in three minutes. So in some way, this three minutes is my hidden but explicit target for evacuation time, because when I design my means of escape, three minutes is what I'm gonna get at fully uh uh like used up uh capacity of the venue. But this is my minimum, and I don't feel like three minutes that's quite a lot actually.
Lazaros Filippidis:It's quite a lot. I mean, if you consider that uh the response time of the of the people, once they realize that something is going on, or once they hear the alarm, um you can expect um response times in the range of 30 seconds, which may sound uh a little, but sometimes it can be longer than that. Many times it's longer than that. But then for establishments like the ones we're talking about, nightclubs, there is the issue of uh fire. So it's not just you know you have uh how quickly the people respond, but what happens with the fire physics as well and the fire dynamics. In some of the uh examples, uh I think the station uh club, the kiss club, uh flushover occurred within uh a minute and a half. So that is way, way, way below the three-minute mark like you just mentioned.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And three minutes would be just you know, just the time to exit minus the the detection, the pre-evacuation time, exactly, decision making, arrival to the exit, like all the other all the other like I I I I seriously wonder, like in fire engineering we we tend to do uh it as a part of acid arson analysis. This is the paradigm that we have in fire safety engineering. Well, do you have uh more time to escape than you potentially uh need? I wonder in in such a difficult setting, can you actually achieve that without using hyperoptimistic assumptions? Because if you use hyper-optimistic assumptions like uh let's say 50% occupation or like medium fire growth, what that you you'll get your acid acid, yes, you you you will have your engineering analysis, you'll clear the project, you it will go for for go. But as you set flashover in one and a half minutes and explicit targeting low three minutes for evacuation, yes. This is failure by design.
Lazaros Filippidis:Indeed, exactly. And as you said, I mean yes, ASET and RSAT studies are conducted uh uh habitually. The issue the issue with that is that uh the pro the the these two processes are not independent. I mean, A set you calculated using a fire model, RSAT using an evacuation model, or other other kinds of tools that you may have, but uh these two processes are not independent. In in reality, both are affected uh they interact. A set may be affected by what people do, by opening fire doors or by using fire mitigation uh systems, which is a positive thing, of course, um if you're using fire mitigation uh systems. But RSAT is usually affected by the fire. People are affected by the presence of uh fire products, narcotic gases, irritant gases, uh high temperatures, and RSAT becomes much, much longer. So when conducting uh an ASAT-R set uh calculation where these two processes are independent, you're actually getting an optimistic result. But if you couple them, if you couple, for example, a fire model and evacuation model, then you'll get more representative uh results. Your asset pol your asset will definitely increase.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:You're developing uh an evacuation model. Do you explicitly account for that in Exodus through some uh means? I I guess uh the the fundamental diagram uh addresses that in terms of walking speed, but any other way?
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, yes, actually, yeah. Well, I'm part of the team that develops uh the Exodus evacuation model, and some of my colleagues are also uh developing uh the smart fire uh fire model. And what we can do within within uh the model is we can couple the evacuation side with um fire modeling results. And we can determine as uh as the simulation is running, as the model is running, and uh you see the you see the simulated agents evacuating from a structure, uh you can see how the fire products can affect them, how they slow down due to the presence of narcotic gases or etern gases. You can see how their uh behavior makes them to stagger. And instead of you know following straight lines towards uh the target, they actually stagger and they they work um uh less efficiently, they can crawl to escape uh the hot upper layer. And uh depending on the level of the narcotic gases, you can actually calculate uh well the model, not you, but the model calculates where you get agents incapacitated.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:In terms of pathfinding, do you also affect the pathfinding? Like you can close do you consider like uh doors uh not being useful anymore and they will start seeking another one?
Lazaros Filippidis:Or in the presence of uh fire products, the agents are able to uh decide whether or not to walk within a smoke-filled environment. And they can choose to redirect. And if they are aware, of course, of an alternative escape route, then they can use uh an alternative escape route that doesn't have so much smoke. But uh also during your scenario setup, you could you can, if you want, you can close doors at specific times if that's what you want to do. But yes, uh agents are able to avoid hazardous environments.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I ask this because this goes to some extent beyond what we would normally do. Like I I I guess if you do a classical uh evacuation analysis following the uh published document guidance, I guess you would close uh one evacuation route anyway to simulate some sort of of challenging outcome. Challenging conditions, yes. But in those venues where the where you start with a very limited, you know, choice of exits and a very limited uh amount of possibilities, closing a door is is quite dramatic, right? Uh that has tremendous effects on the outcomes of the analysis.
Lazaros Filippidis:Well, it is it is very challenging, of course. And you can you can use these kind of models even for uh forensic analysis. If you have enough uh data to reproduce uh an incident, you can use this kind of uh tools to conduct uh forensic analysis and and and more or less determine what caused uh incapacitation, what kind of um qualitatively and quantitely determine the number of uh fatalities you'll have in the environment, and so on.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Uh let's let's talk occupy and response because you brought that up and then I find it quite interesting. Like you mentioned, oh, people could react in 30 seconds. For me as a fire engine, um yeah, yeah, not exactly 30 seconds, but it it is possible. Like if you if someone mentions to me uh that people could respond in 30 seconds and I'm a fire engineer and I'm using my fire engineer's brain, 30 seconds. Wow, that's a quick response. That's that's like I would call it a fairly quick response to the fire because I'm very used to having one, three minute delay time distributions with a mean of like two and a half or whatever. Like I'm I'm I'm used to minutes. If you give me seconds, I take it. Any time of the day, I take it. If you give me seconds, but imagine 30 seconds that's like three TikTok videos nowadays. Like if you have a video and you have people standing for 30 seconds until they reach a decision to evacuate and decide to evacuate, the general feedback would be oh my god, what a bunch of idiots. They just stood there, they have not moved, they they did not react, you know. And and this exactly happened after the the recent fire. This happens after every fire. It happens all the time, all the time, and and I'm like, wow, that's actually like based on my knowledge and my experience and the data I see. This is not bad. But from the societal point of view, it they're like, these are idiots literally. And I had yes, it's that's quite the challenge, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, unfortunately, we we've read all these uh comments of characterizing these people as idiots. But uh, let me make uh a step back first. Uh uh about these 30 seconds. I mean, 30 seconds is definitely not something that happens all the time. But um 30 seconds is is obviously it's not a hard number, it's an optimistic number. But we've seen in videos that sometimes people do respond that quickly. But in other times, and depending on the environment, sometimes it takes minutes, could it take five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, it could take 30 minutes, could take half an hour or more to respond to to an alarm. But uh for the cases we're talking about, generally the response time is generally short because we're talking about a small venue, uh the fire spreads extremely quickly. As we mentioned earlier, you could have uh flashover within uh a minute, two minutes, three minutes. I mean it's it's it does take very quickly. It happens very quickly. So people will respond relatively quickly. And then there is a question of how quickly can we reasonably expect people to respond. And then your question about um the use of the phones, the mobile phones, and uh the unfortunate comments that we we saw on um on social media about how stupid these people were that they used mobile phones during the incident. So what I would say for that to that is that first of all, we cannot blame the victims.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It so triggers me.
Lazaros Filippidis:Like you can't explain it. It's it's crazy. They the the people go there to have fun. They don't get in there to be vigilant and escape. That's not the purpose. Their purpose there is to have fun, drink a bit, talk to other people, be attracted, get attracted, attract others, and so on. They they go there to so um it's a social event. Uh making them disengage from their activities quickly enough is something that takes some processes, an alarm. In many cases, in many uh, for example, in the Swiss fire, in the station fire, and in other examples that I've seen, um the music doesn't stop. So you have a fire that has started, it expands very quickly, it spreads quickly, but the music doesn't stop. So it's very difficult for somebody to disengage. They sometimes people misinterpret what they see and they think it's part of the show.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Especially if you especially if fireworks were just previously used in the venue, which was a part of the show. They were the part of the show. You have to be able to tell in a split second this is a part of the show, this is not the part of the show, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Uh exactly. And you have to have uh the knowledge, you have to be risk-aware, and your risk perception has to be to such a level that you must recognize the threat instantly. How many people can do that? How where will they get this knowledge from?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I would even go further. I I've seen, I I've not participated in such a presentation myself, but I've seen in in many like 5D, 60, 70 cinemas how many dimensions you can fit in a cinema. That's another podcast episode. But there were these effects like of uh flames crawling on the ceiling. They just emit some sort of mist and project uh you know flames on the ceiling to enhance the you know the experience of the user, and you have actually quite realistic flames around you which are not real, which is a part of the show. And you know, uh you you may not even record this, but you subconsciously seen something like that in an internet video, and you could associate this with a part of this being the entourage of the of the event. I mean, it's it you cannot with a hundred percent certainty exclude that someone could use uh a special effect like that to enhance their uh performance, go to any Rammstein concert. Like there's a ton of flames in Rammstein concerts, this is a part of the show. It's not a hundred percent given that the flame is not a part of the artistic expression during the uh the the event. And if I can take this even further, because like imagine you are in there, you're having fun, you're in a mode of enjoying the show, and suddenly the ceiling ignites. You are expected within a few seconds, having seen only the beginning of the fire, to project accurately a few minutes into the future, how quick will be the growth of the fire? Is the material flammable or not? Uh, how much you have time until the venue fills out with smoke? What are my risk capacities? Am I at risk? Should I evacuate immediately and judge? Uh is this did this pass the threshold of it being a hazardous fire or is just you know an unpleasant uh thing? And oh my god, I've paid 200 bucks for these tickets, and now there's this fire destroying my experience. And by the way, it's years even it's super cold outside. And and you are supposed to process all of this information uh before the TikTok video runs out and someone calls you an idiot. I'm getting I get four weeks to answer most of those questions related to the fire spread, smoke spread, and toxicity. That I get full for whole four weeks, I get a supercomputer, I I model that, and I can give you an answer. I am not able to give you an answer in five seconds. If I have been in that venue, it would also take me 30 seconds.
Lazaros Filippidis:And if it would take some time, yeah.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And if I was uh 20 years old Voyager, I would probably not evacuate at all.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yeah, probably yes, you never know. You never know. I mean, and and it's also the other thing you have to think about is uh all the things you mentioned, of course, are accurate, and you'll have to assess whether the escape routes are sufficient, and you'll be able to find them as well.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah.
Lazaros Filippidis:So you know what? What I do, um I have two kids. Yeah. So when when incidents like these uh happen, they're they're they're they're 12 and uh 14 years old. When incidents like these happen, I actually show them the video. So I I actually trained them to be vigilant. I tell them, this is what happened. Look how quickly the fire spread. Look where what the people did. Look at all the congestion at the exits. Obviously, some of these videos are not nice to be too graphic. They are too graphic. I mean I some time ago I analyzed um the Iraq, uh the Iraqi the the Iraqi wedding uh fire incident, and I was going through the videos again and again and again, and it was really, really well, it was very unpleasant for me as well. I mean, obviously for the families it's just a huge tragedy and can't think of what how the families could I don't know, think about that. It's just terrible. But I I do show these things to my kids because you never know what where they will end up later on in life. Now they're supervised most well, not anymore actually. But up to now they were supervised most of the time with some adult, me, mum, their mum or teachers. But from now on they'll be on their own. They go out, they go to venues, they meet friends. Somehow they need to be aware of the risks.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I've never thought about it from this perspective, but if you think about it, the best place to be in a venue is probably the worst place uh from the perspective of evacuation, right? Because l literally you are the furthest away from the uh exits and and the closest to to the biggest crowd. So you're actively optimizing your position against the evacuation still if you think about it, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Indeed. Uh well that's that's it. I mean you want to be in the action, you want to be where everything happens.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Uh you you brought up the uh the Al Haitam wedding fire. I think in in that one, actually, the the occupant response was was quite quick.
Lazaros Filippidis:Um It was very quick. It was very quick. I actually analyzed that incident because uh somebody commented that uh the people didn't respond uh properly. And I I watched the same video. People there responded within seconds. They observed the fire when it was tiny, within seconds. Granted, some of them tried to put it out, which was impossible for us. It was really high, and it's just you can't do it. But it was a rational decision to try and put it out. Obviously it was futile, but okay, they tried. And then you could see uh you could observe parents gathering the kids and forming groups and getting out as quickly as possible. But uh the escape routes were very limited. In that uh venue, one of the doors was actually opening inside, indoors.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Uh-huh.
Lazaros Filippidis:It was opening towards uh the inside. I think there was only one main uh entrance and one escape route that wasn't that available eventually. They didn't know the patrons didn't know about it, and the fire spread very quickly. Again, it ignited pyrotechnics ignited decorations in the ceiling, um, the tables, the way that they were organized uh prevented uh quick evacuation. There were trolleys, heavy trolleys within the corridors. So that was another obstruction. The people couldn't they had to push it.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:This is the observation because yeah, I like well uh coming back to what I said about furniture and furnishing. I never had a trolley's uh in my model. I never ever had trolleys in my model. Well, you wouldn't normally put it, I guess. No, I I would not do that as a fire safety engineer. I I I as a fire safety engineer. You know, I I do this also because I I wonder if anything more can be done. I obviously don't design that many nightclubs, but if I ever get one, I uh I would love. like it to be uh working well. Actually, I I was designing a nightclub or let's say a venue in in in historical uh Krakow many years ago. And I think this this is the only project in my career I've not signed off after. Like after after we exhausted the ability to engineer that project, we just told the guy like, I'm sorry, there is no way I can you know provide you the safety measures I I would be comfortable with. I'll maybe make a podcast episode about it because it's quite an interesting it was painful for me and I've later years later I've developed a way of of smoke control that actually could have worked in that facility. But but it it's like I I I'm thinking about how can I improve my myself as far engine because look if I I get the the the the architectural drawings of the facility I do a building exodus modeling of that and I have like 30 seconds spare before ACR city I I win 30 seconds is the margin maybe is sufficient maybe not that's another question what margin should be but I I let let's assume I do it. But I have not put in a trolley and I put the trolley in the middle of the you know most congested pathway to the exit and suddenly my three minutes may turn into six. That's an issue is it outside of the realm of of possibility that there's something blocking that pathway absolutely not there's absolutely realistic scenario which uh and I already was thinking I'm doing the worst case one right yeah yeah indeed absolutely well first of all that was a very responsible position that you took in that uh case thank you and that's that's that's but then but to be honest uh Lazaros I mean lucky I I I I don't want to uh sound like morally superior or anything I'm I'm in a position where I can do that because I'm my own boss uh we're a governmental institution if we sign up on really bad things that's not uh leading by example in my country I I can do that but if I am a fire engineer in a small firm and my boss is obsessed with earning money and he insists that could be an issue you can put a stress on you you may not be in the position of comfort where you don't sign off a project really you know and and I could be an issue I I I feel really bad for my colleagues in the profession who who find themselves in such a circumstances and this unfortunately happens yeah so yeah it was a responsible decision in a position of comfort uh unfortunately yeah but still you took the right decision I still do took it yeah yeah you still did the right thing we we just started and we're almost nerving uh uh an hour but uh I I would like to comment now on the the physics of fires as is I know like we we discussed it before the show you you're you're uh evacuation expert uh I try to frame myself as someone who's seen uh a bit of fire physics and there are three elements maybe four elements that for me given the the recent Swiss fire and other fires are very um uh challenging and and I would love for the fire engineers to be aware uh how it works one is the uh heat transfer like if you have and I wrote it on LinkedIn if you have uh a fire that's rolling over your ceiling and you literally have flames on the ceiling this means that the flyer radiates downwards with a view factor of one like you could simplify it to thinking that the receiving end of this radiation is kind of at the same temperature as the fire because the all the radiated heat emitted by the fire is received because the view factor is one and this is like one if you have a a a Christmas tree or a campfire and you you can put your hands in front and the hands are hot and your face is not because with the square of distance that's gonna diminish. If you have factor of one it never diminishes it's like super radical heat transfer. This is very very challenging the second thing is how quickly the the conditions will transition from perfect visibility to no visibility. I would recommend people go and Google FSRI videos from their home experiments flashover experiments and you can watch like five minutes of video it's perfect visibility bam 30 seconds and then suddenly yeah it's it's ex it's exponential in fire growth and it's exponential in the way how uh Lambert beer low works it's two exponential factors that are on top of each other so it's really really really ridiculously rapid decline in that and another thing that that I wanted to highlight if you have a venue that is underground and the only exit goes upwards and then you have the exits to the atmosphere at that higher floor by definition by by laws of physics it means that your neutral pressure plane is a floor above like it it creates there is absolute like we love to think about fire dynamics you're gonna have a hot smoke layer you're gonna have a clean air layer below in such a setting no you are gonna have a whole room filled with smoke with the smoke electric smoke yeah like it it's not new physics it's known fire physics but it it's it's a physics that dramatically adds to uh conditions in those in those facilities yes indeed I guess you have seen that you've analyzed all those videos I I guess this is something you you see like very rapidly in the Swiss in in the Swiss tragedy this is what exactly what happened what you described um people had to evacuate offwards and uh the stern well created a chimney effect probably creative chimney effect all the all the toxic gases went the same way the same way as the people tried to evacuate gases toxic gases it's the worst conditions that they could have experienced and I believe most of the fatalities were found on the on the staircase I believe um and then you had two elements of bottlenecks after the stair after the staircase two exits that they had to get out from but those created uh a bottleneck as well so yes what you described is actually the absolutely what what may happen what happened in this uh particular case yeah and uh now on the topic of the the phones the the acoustic phones and fire spread again if someone asks me for those venues with low ceilings it's a difficult uh it's a difficult matter because you know in in Europe we have Euroclass we we you can have uh products of varying degree of flammability it's hard to throw them into the same you know uh bag that they're equivalent but I would just say non-combustible like not fire retarded I would be vigilant about it like completely non-combustible materials on the city yes yes absolutely absolutely because there are too far too many examples where we actually do see that uh they cause a neat problem uh they're they're flammable in so many cases this somehow has to change somehow this has to change plus there should probably a ban on fireworks and pyrotechnics in such uh venues as well that that is that's a that's a challenging point actually for me because while okay I agree that it would be better to ban them you know I I I agree that it would be safer if they were not allowed in such a venue but do I believe we could execute this ban? Now I'm not so sure very difficult. Yeah so so you you know while I agree that it should not be allowed to do that yeah no at the same time I do not feel that an engineer should have a presumption that it's never gonna happen in such a venue. In other words and that this is also something well when I was commenting I I it I don't like to comment on fresh things in in the internet I know you also don't that's why I brought you in here but uh yeah but uh I I I always try to find something uh at least a lesson at least uh you know a strive to be better in the future uh and I I don't like to to to come in and and highlight the obvious oh yeah that people were idiots and and they should have fireworks in their hands having uh enjoying their new years I want to say that we design those spaces for human beings and human beings will do different degrees of smart things from very unsmart things to very extremely smart things right and and I think in a place like that it's it's quite reasonable to assume there in the history because again it is this one even there probably have been a hundred parties in in those clubs and no one died and if if if on the particular night of the disaster the disaster has not happened there could have been a hundred more parties where no one has died right exactly exactly and uh so I I don't like to assess this per case basis but rather the lifetime of the building basis is it's you could expect that during the lifetime of the building someone will bring fireworks in someone will have a birthday cake someone will have a New Year's celebration someone will uh you could have a kid's band trying to do a Rammstein version of the themselves just having fun and then thinking oh maybe I'll blow this bottle of of uh alcohol up with the flame Rammstein does it it's it's it's within the realm of expected scenarios in such venues and such thing and and if if such a thing can happen it should there should not be a single point of failure like ignition of the ceiling 50 fatalities. There should not be like such a direct link between a single event and and the and then the catastrophical outcome that that that's what I want the fire safety engineers to do. No absolutely I mean there have to be uh appropriate uh fire safety measures present in every venue uh the materials have to be appropriate and fire retardant I guess also the inspections have to be more uh rigorous absolutely yeah that that's that's another one that that the thank you for bringing this up this is like if you have I I think a lot of those things should be executed by low the exit capacity the um how clean the exits are etc but it should not just be a requirement I think there should be enforcement I I'm very I very uh rarely agree with Vincent Branagh but he's super right on this one if you don't have enforcement those rules will not provide you what you want them to provide you and I think in in this case actually the the enforcement of those uh rules and and requirements should be absurdly high absurdly exactly I mean people have a tendency to cut corners so this things have to be enforced safety has to be enforced absolutely uh perhaps uh for for because you know we we all we all learn from those tragedies so when they appear in the media we we know about them and they I wonder like there must have been a lot of near misses in those venues right even in our short like reiteration of of of text messages we already uh investigated some of the near misses preparing for this episode I wonder how many near misses are there and what we can learn from them.
Lazaros Filippidis:Well what can I say I can't I can't give you a number of course the near misses uh they wouldn't make the news but um I've seen I've seen a video of a near miss in Athens in Greece uh where a waiter was uh holding uh a birthday cake with pyrotechnics on the birthday cake and of course in order to avoid uh other people in the venue he held uh the birthday cake above his head and by doing so he ignited uh unintentionally of course ignited ceiling decorations uh the venue burned down completely but uh thankfully in that case everybody managed to escape with only a few very minor um injuries uh this this took place in um two years ago yeah 2024 in uh a bit earlier than that in in London in another club people were holding um pyrotechnics I think they had something that looked like a bottle with pyrotechnics on it but it wasn't a drink itself they were just holding pyrotechnics and and I think one of them unintentionally again uh lit a Christmas tree and you could see people realizing that uh that was really a bad situation they managed to evacuate with with with no fatalities so I think everybody can assume that these kind of incidents take place all the time we just don't learn about them because then they don't get a chance to be broadcast in the mass media.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I think this could be an interesting research project to investigate those I I think that's a huge missed opportunity for fire safety science that we don't pay sufficient attention to near misses like uh you you're from Greenwich Eddie's obviously doing aircraft and he's obviously exposed into the aircraft culture where they are obsessed with near misses like near misses is is investigated just like a catastrophe just like a catastrophe. It would be interesting to know to scientifically run through a bunch of those cases where you had a near miss and investigate how it looked like like if it was a catastrophe and then compare those findings to the ones that you have for for events where they didn't end up so optimistically and perhaps on Ravel what what made the difference because I I would guess it's it's small things that that make a difference.
Lazaros Filippidis:I mean one one of the examples I told you the one in Athens they they broke the windows to get out. Okay. And it was if they could easily break the windows in though in that case uh but we know in other cases the windows are yeah had boards uh nailed on them or they had uh metal grids on them that couldn't be removed or the windows themselves the gas was too thick or yeah or in in new buildings the windows are ridiculously uh rigid you can't break them you can't break them like I remember uh maybe that was not the smartest thing to do but after a fire experiment I had a window that was lying on the on the ground and I was jumping on it and it wouldn't would not crack at all.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah yeah it don't they don't break like they're very very hard to break so yeah well that the well but this goes into the theme of increasing the means of uh escape capacity and drastically shortening the RC that that's the question I've asked before is a half meter more exit capacity sufficient i I guess not but perhaps an easily breakable window can if you have five of those you suddenly create this uh additional space that is sufficient right but it also creates its own hazard of course of course yeah yeah yeah so that that is you have to be careful of that one last question before we end that the fire is not the only uh thing that that can happen you can also have uh very uh quite severe accidents or incidents related just to evacuation process itself like crowd crash events or I mean if if someone is injured that for me is already a serious event you you you could have those in Poland for example I mean it's fire related but we we had a massive fire in one of the uh concert facilities in Gdańsk and uh there was I I I think 12 fatalities but they were mostly linked to uh they they perished at the evacuation door because it was locked with the chain so so is it it's not always the the the the fire that that kills people you could also have just an evacuation case which ends up very bad on its own. And we are also quite aware of that and measures should be should be put in place right? Yes absolutely I mean you can have crowd collapsing and crowd crushing again as a result of um an urgent evacuation you wouldn't normally see this in a non-urgent evacuation but in an urgent evacuation especially in overpopulated uh conditions even if there's no evacuation and you have you know just an area is overcrowded like in concerts it has happened in concerts where people got crushed and they die uh from uh asphyxiation they can't breathe because they're the they're so much crushed by the the crowd behind them or around them they they they can't move they can't breathe so that's another safety issue not fire related but it's a safety issue oh man it's it's so depressing like never ends yeah it never like it's it just repeats like yeah you just mentioned that there was a fire in Madrid that just follows the same theme and and probably in a few months we'll have another one like every every year we get one at least one and and they are all always like such a massive uh uh loss of life and so many you know I I wish like we we have the superpower today that the humanity is connected like never before like you don't need you don't need to lose a hundred kids in your own country to learn that you shouldn't put flammable insulation in your ceiling or perhaps you should really have different level of vigilance and safety measures when you do pyrotechnics inside the venue or you probably shouldn't do that at all or you maybe should have think about not blocking the evacuation exits. I I just wish that authorities recognize how fairly easy the problem is from the perspective of science administrators realize that their actions have uh immediate consequences and uh and for the society I'm not even like of course we should educate society I just had an episode with George Boosters about making a safety culture I'm full in we should educate the society but we cannot fully rely on just societal education right no you cannot necessarily rely on it but I think it's a good idea especially if you start at young kids it's cool I've seen examples in uh Japan and Korea very very young school children maybe they're um I don't know five years old they're told to how to evacuate from the classroom they're told to you know bend down avoid this the hot upper layer they put uh fake fires yeah they had those cute uh cardboard fires uh I think so but and uh you can also see them uh uh using uh water hoses and fire extinguishers they become familiar with the dangers the risks and they they get familiar with what they have to do in case of an emergency so I'm a strong advocate of educating very young kids on these kind of issues it won't hurt even if you save one it's good enough actually i if you have five more minutes I would like to take five more minutes of your time because one one thought is going on repeat on in my head as I told you I I like to do those podcast episodes so that the engineers take something with them uh because it's the majority of people listening are fire safety engineers I of course welcome everyone to listen to fire science show I know there's one lawyer who's listening to this yeah uh I hope you had a great time listening but um as a fire engineer I get and I want to run an evacuation simulation for such a venue right uh they tell me there's 500 people could be in the venue. So this scenario 500 people in the venue in this case I don't feel it's my worst scenario like this is the expected use scenario because if you have a venue you basically would like to sell it out you know with tickets like if 500 is the capacity 500 would be the target so so for me that's a normal day use of that facility. I know in in some countries which have extremely strong safety culture, like in Japan, like you would never have 501 people inside, I guess. Uh, but in many places of the world, and you you have a very nice concert plan, uh, maybe 700 could fit in. Like, I mean, I I'm not sure how much I can trust this number as being the absolute possible amount of people in the room. So, uh how would you approach that as an engineer? Would you put a safety margin on the number of occupants who could be in the would you investigate the stress scenario?
Lazaros Filippidis:First of all, let me say something that I read on social media from somebody who actually goes to vengeance like this. He actually said he wrote he wrote this that whenever he goes to a club from now on, whenever he goes to a club and uh you know the bouncer tells him that we are at capacity, he'll say, Thank you, I'm not coming in. Uh so he would he would never try and get in to a place that is near near near or has exceeded his capacity. So that's one of the things that we should do as uh let's say users of users, yeah.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Professional advice for uh for venue users.
Lazaros Filippidis:If somebody tells you it's a near capacity, don't go in. There's no point. Yeah, because you never know. But uh to answer your your question, what you would do. I mean, it's obviously it's very difficult to trust uh a single number of five hundred people, for example, for a particular venue. It's just it's a hard number, it's difficult to trust just that. But uh as a fire safe engineer, what you can do is you can you can run you can do some risk analysis, you can run a large number of hypothetical cases, and you can include a you can you can include a number of hazards and see what kind of interaction the occupants, the buildings and the hazards over what is the overall interaction between these three elements the occupant, the building, and the hazard, and what kind of outcome you get. Obviously this takes time and resources, but it's it's the kind of study that um you'd have to do if you want to you get a feel of the conditions you may you may you may get in in in the venue.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Kind of like a sensitivity analysis. Does another 50 people completely change my outcome or not? And perhaps blocking this one blocking an exit exit actually doubles the time, which means this is your distress. I I think I I I wouldn't say I've done it like that in the past. I've there I've definitely followed the guidance of of analyzing at least one blocked exit. That's I think a good practice, but I think that's a well-established practice already at this point that that you should design with uh with one uh worst exit, uh which one is worse. That's a subject of uh of discussion. But I think like introducing those stress scenarios, uh, you you obviously will not know the likelihood of those, or risk would be challenging, but uh you could expose like which ones lead to dramatic decline in the in the safety. And I guess the same would go for the fire growth. Like uh if if you're designing for uh a medium curve, perhaps drop a fast one or ultra fast one and see what happens.
Lazaros Filippidis:I mean, this is the benefit of modeling, far modeling or evacuation modeling. You can you have the tools, maybe not the time or the other or other resources, but you have the tools to examine a plora of scenarios and conduct sensitivity analysis, as you mentioned. Well, technically that's the benefit of these things.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:In regards of venues like the ones that we discussed today, you could get pretty far with the zone model, to be honest. Like uh even if you especially if you go something like B-Risk with uh probabilistic aspects of it, that you can uh define input scenarios as a range of of variables and not uh not the single numbers but probabilistic distributions, you could run a thousand scenarios and investigate uh is there one that is absolutely uh really bad. So yeah, I actually if I uh I I'm a fire engineer, if I had uh a venue like this, and I've used that uh before, like my ACE is uh 30 seconds more than R set. Is this safe enough? I I guess uh like it's just a number, but if I do a sensitivity analysis, it gives me context of that number because if I know with a simple measure I could improve it to two minutes, that's something that's worth pursuing, right?
Lazaros Filippidis:Yeah, and yeah, as you said, do you have some safety margin there? Um I mean the models are models, they're not um they cannot represent reality to the highest possible degree. So you need to add some kind of safety factor there. Fantastic. For sure.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Now I'm now I'm happy. Now we've provided engineers with tangible advice directed to fire safety engineers because I I felt hopeless. I didn't feel there's much that fire engineers could do for safety of those venues. If you if you have such a project on your desk, try and do sensitivity analysis, understand the bottlenecks and the potential issues that you have, and if you need unfortunate inspiration of how the fires could develop on or what scenarios you could expect, there's unfortunately too many uh videos of those uh fires in the in the internet to pretend that uh no one will ever bring uh fireworks or or any other thing.
Lazaros Filippidis:Exactly, exactly.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's even a birthday cake, like you know, can you imagine like a fire starting from a birthday cake? This is like this or or that weather. This is so yeah, it's a tragedy. This is terrible. So sad. Well, anyway, uh thank you, thank you for for coming to Fire Science Schulazaros. I wish that the occasion was uh a nicer one, and I hope there won't be that many occasions like this to discuss matters like this in the future is always devastating. But yeah, we uh gave engineers some food for thought and and let's strive to be better as a foreign engineering society. Thanks.
Lazaros Filippidis:Yes, thank you very much. I enjoyed uh our talk. Thank you.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And that's it, thank you for listening. This was not an easy episode to prep and record. Uh we wanted to avoid, you know, this uh sensational attention-building habit of uh of the modern world that uh a thing happens and uh you know it's all about commenting as fast as you can and getting clicks and uh some kind of online respect tokens. At the same time, everyone speaks about this horrible fire in Krasmontana in Switzerland, and uh obviously it's an opportunity to highlight some people uh non-fire experts or fire experts who may not be that active in that subject on their everyday basis. Opportunity to actually highlight something good. I hope we we we got something good out of this episode. The most terrifying thing is that uh we could have spent the entire episodes talking about the recent fire in Switzerland and not bring it up even once. Because we could just talk about Coconut Groove or the station or the Kiss Club or the Iraqi wedding or there were so many of those fires and they all are so unfortunately similar to each other. The issue cannot be solved by the fire safety engineers. Unfortunately, we're not the solution for this. The solutions are well known. The solutions exist. It's the governments, the enforcement, the authorities, the local authorities, the club owners and the participants who with our support can solve the issue. We are part of the solution, but we're not the complete solution. And I hope we all understand our role in this and uh with this in mind, well, we should act and we should help finding the solution to prevent the next event like this. Uh but uh I'm just disappointed at our ability to act as a society, uh frankly speaking. Nevertheless, uh for the practicing fire engineers, I think those sensitivity studies mentioned at the end this is exactly the practical, tangible outcome of this episode that I was looking for the entire 60 minutes of interviewing Lazaros, and I'm super happy that we got to that one at the end because it's something that I feel I can improve my own professional judgment of fires in such venues, and I will definitely go like that, and I hope some of you will do as well. Uh what more to say? I just wish us all uh having less and less opportunities to you know discuss fires like that. I just hope they don't really happen at all, or at least that often. Anyways, uh that would be it for today's episode of Fire Science Show next week. Another dose of fire science going your way. So stick up with us and see you here next Wednesday. Thank you. Bye.