WITH another firefighters’ strike still on the cards at the time of writing, matters of public safety are well to the fore in the media. Something that sparked my interest and set me asking questions of ministers was the safety of steel fire doors. These are supposed to give people at least an hour to escape a blazing building, but may fail far sooner (Â鶹´«Ã½, 24 August, p 6).
In a mock hotel blaze, Daniel Joyeux, a fire researcher at the Industrial Technical Centre of Steel Construction near Paris, found that the outer steel sheeting of a safety…
