When a fire door is called on, it gets one chance to do its job. The rest of the year it’s bumped by trolleys, wedged open “just for a minute,” and expected to shrug off constant wear and tear….

our automatic fire detection and alarm system (FDAS) isn’t just there to shout “FIRE!” and wake everyone up. In modern buildings it also tells other systems what to do—release doors, start smoke control, drop shutters, trigger paging, even shut down fuel and ventilation….

From burnt toast to blocked exits, we’ve seen every fire safety fail under the sun….