"in case of fire, do not use elevator, use stairs."

Post Reply New Topic

It doesn't say "in the case of fire", but "in case of fire."

It looks like it means not to use the elevator just in case there might a fire.

I remember when I worked on the railways and our company rented the top floor (5th floor) of a building in our capital city for their "Control" office and the top floor of another building which was devoted to the office staff who sorted out our pay and out taxes and other office type things in regards to employing the many staff we had and this top floor was 11 storeys high.

So wyen it came to a team brief where there were unusually 14 of us in this team brief in out home depotbas due to circumstances they had fallen behind (Usually team briefs there were only two or three of us) they had to ask us the following question:

"If you were in the fifth floor of ***** ****** ***** or the eleventh floor of ****** *****, what don't you use in the event of a fire?"
Before anyone else answered I quickly said "The windows!"
With that everyone burst out laughing and my trains manager said "Yes. Don't use the wondows, but that wasn't the answer we were looking for!"
(We had so many team briefs over the years we knew the answer off by heart anyway. We actually were not allowed to work in the job unless we knew these things so team briefs were a kind of reminder of the basic safety rules along with anything else that needed sorting).

[The stars hide the buildings name].

Early in the pandemic I saw a sign saying "Please stay 6 feet apart for the coronavirus."

Which sounds like it means stay 6 feet apart in order to get the coronavirus.

Actually saw so many situaations where the rules actually put more people at risk than if they had done nothing as stupidity went out the window!

They both mean that if there's a fire you shouldn't use the elevator. The latter is stating it as a specific case that there is a fire don't use the elevator. The former is saying that if there is a fire not to use the elevator.

Removing the "the" from the sentence is strictly speaking somewhat more correct as you wouldn't know if there were a fire without actually going onto the floor, you'd just know that about the alarm going off.

It's more or less the same issue with flammable versus inflammable which for all practical purposes mean the same thing. Whether something burns or can be lit on fire isn't really a particular useful condition as things don't generally burn without catching on fire. And things that can be lit on fire burn.

"Flammable" is not a real word. That is it was made up. The grammatically correct way to describe something carried in a tanker truck in order to warn drivers is....INflammable. You inflame something (like gasoline or kindling wood) to start a fire. You dont "flame" it.

The problem is most motorists arent on the ball enough and wrongly interpret the word "inflammable" as "UNflammable" so...not to worry! So the powers at be decided to decorate tanker trucks and other containers with the never before existing word "flammable" instead of "inflammable" to clear up the confusion. Means the same damn thing as "inflammable".

Which isn't true, the term flammable predates the ICE and such warnings by nearly 2 centuries. Which is admittedly more recent than inflammable. As far as inflammable goes, it was never really fine as a word as it does look suspiciously like words like incomplete, incompetent and inconsolable. In terms of inflammation, it is indeed inflame+able, but, considering how important the warning signs are, requiring people to know the etymology of the word to know that it means the exact opposite of one of the reasonable interpretations of the word is just asking for trouble. At this point, it's been well over 30 years since it was discouraged from use on signs and it's only going to fall further and further out of common usage as a result.

The sign should read, "If the fire alarm goes off, use the stairs."

One of the places I worked for had the person going down stairs with a fire symbol near one of the elevators. Well, someone modified the figure with a pencil to have an machete in one hand, a can labeled gasoline in the other and a wicked smile on the face. It stayed there for several years without being replaced, through several fire inspections with the local departments. It gave me a nice chuckle every time I saw it.

BTW - I was not the one who modified the sign. It was likely one of the research students in another lab during their down times.