Life saving fire exit method and apparatus

Abstract

An apparatus for inhibiting wide dispersal of heat, smoke and noxious gases from a fire in a structure such as a building occupied by people, thereby facilitating evacuation of the building through exit routes rendered relatively smoke-free by the apparatus includes a portable enclosure which has an entrance opening hermetically sealable to a doorway opening when the enclosure is moved into position adjacent to the doorway, and encloses an open-top tank which contains water, and a vertical baffle which protrudes downwardly from a roof panel of the enclosure, the baffle being disposed transversely across the enclosure with a lower edge of the baffle immersed beneath the surface of the water to thereby form a water-trap type air-lock. A method of traveling from a smoke-filled region of a building to a smoke-free region comprises stepping into water in the tank through the enclosure entrance opening, ducking the head under the lower edge of the baffle, walking on the tank bottom to the opposite side of the baffle, and exiting the tank through an exit opening in the enclosure. In one embodiment of the apparatus, a solid baffle is replaced by one or more curtains of water which flow downwardly from a manifold disposed transversely under the roof panel of the enclosure, water from the tank being recirculated to the manifold by a pump.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.