Simulate staged evacuation protocols per NFPA 72 Chapter 24 — alarm floor first, then adjacent floors, then full building. Includes high-rise and healthcare RACE protocols.
This simulator demonstrates staged fire evacuation protocols per NFPA 72 Chapter 24 and NFPA 101 means of egress requirements, showing how alarm notifications sequence across floors and how occupant loads move through exit systems. Fire protection engineers and life safety consultants use it to plan and review evacuation strategies before a system is installed.
NFPA 72 Chapter 24 (Emergency Communications Systems) defines occupant notification strategies ranging from total simultaneous evacuation to selective or staged evacuation. In a staged sequence, the floor of alarm origin and adjacent floors (one above, one below) receive immediate evacuation signals, while other floors receive standby or alert signals and are told to prepare for possible evacuation. This approach is used in high-rise buildings to prevent dangerous crowding of stairwells.
For high-rise buildings specifically, NFPA 72 §24.4 requires voice evacuation systems capable of providing floor-specific instructions. The fire floor and floors immediately above and below are evacuated first; remaining floors are notified in sequence as conditions escalate. In healthcare facilities, NFPA 101 mandates a defend-in-place strategy using the RACE protocol (Rescue, Alarm, Contain, Extinguish/Evacuate) with horizontal relocation rather than floor evacuation.
NFPA 72 Chapter 24 governs emergency communications systems, including voice evacuation and mass notification. NFPA 101 Life Safety Code Chapter 7 sets occupant load factors (e.g., 100 sq ft per person in office occupancies), exit widths (0.3 in per person for stairs, 0.2 in per person for level egress), and maximum travel distances to exits (200 ft in unsprinklered, 250 ft in sprinklered office occupancies). IBC Chapter 10 mirrors many NFPA 101 provisions and is adopted in most US jurisdictions.
Occupant load drives exit capacity requirements — a large open office floor with 200 occupants requires 200 × 0.3 = 60 in of stairwell width (typically three 36-in stair doors or two 44-in doors). Travel distance to the nearest exit must not exceed code limits measured along the path of travel, not straight-line distance.
High-rise buildings require at least two pressurized stairwells per NFPA 101 §11.8.1, elevator recall to the ground floor lobby on alarm (ASME A17.1 Phase I recall), and a fire command station at ground level. Healthcare evacuation must account for non-ambulatory patients and uses horizontal evacuation to an adjacent fire compartment rather than vertical exit stair travel, which requires smoke compartment boundaries per NFPA 101 §18.3.7.
Select the building type (office, high-rise, or healthcare), choose a simulation speed multiplier, and press Start Simulation. The floor-by-floor status panel updates in real time showing each floor's evacuation status. The event timeline on the right records each notification event with a timestamp. Watch for the staged sequence: alarm floor first, adjacent floors next, then escalation as conditions worsen. Use the Reset button to restart with the same building or switch to a different building type.
Simultaneous total evacuation of a 20-story building could place thousands of occupants in stairwells at once, creating dangerous crowding, falls, and blocked emergency responder access. Staged evacuation controls stairwell population by moving floors in sequence, allowing each group to reach the exit before the next group enters the stair.
Defend-in-place is used in occupancies where total evacuation is impractical or more dangerous than sheltering, primarily hospitals and nursing homes. Instead of evacuating vertically, staff move patients horizontally past a smoke compartment boundary door to a safe area on the same floor, allowing the fire to be contained while patients remain on a protected floor.
RACE stands for Rescue (move patients out of the fire compartment), Alarm (activate the nearest pull station), Contain (close all fire and smoke doors to limit fire spread), and Extinguish or Evacuate (use a portable extinguisher if safe, or initiate horizontal evacuation if the fire is uncontrollable). It is the standardized healthcare fire response procedure endorsed by The Joint Commission and NFPA 101.
NFPA 101 §7.3.3.1 requires 0.3 in of exit width per occupant for stairs and 0.2 in per occupant for level components. For a floor with 100 occupants, the minimum stair width would be 100 × 0.3 = 30 in, but NFPA 101 §7.3.3.2 sets an absolute minimum of 36 in for any means of egress component serving more than 50 occupants.
Yes. NFPA 72 §24.5.2 requires emergency voice/alarm communications (EVAC) systems to have a dedicated amplifier and secondary power supply capable of operating the system for the required standby period. In high-rise buildings, NFPA 72 §24.4 requires the EVAC system to be capable of operating for a minimum of 24 hours in standby plus 15 minutes in full operation.
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