Do we have professional safety personnel that can convince otherwise?

It isn't uncommon to see emergency exit normally locked.

Fire wardens are required to assume responsibility of safe & timely evacuation, which includes unlocking the emergency exit.

I vote for a review of this procedure to eliminate human factor risk from the critical path of evacuation.

The outcome from failure/inability to unlock the emergency exit door is of greater consequence than the abuse of using the emergency exit door during normal operation.

Fire emergency doors are supposed to be accessible every time of the day so long as there are occupants in the building..

Most of those doors are usually designed in a way that when you open it, it triggers fire alarm.

Instead of locking the door, there should be a fine for false alarm

@favoured234: I agree with you, but again, let us consider that a number of buildings do not have electronic systems tied to the emergency doors. The manual activation glass that is broken in the event of fire, at best, is all that is relied upon.

I read in the news that the fire that took place in a chemical plant due to uncontrolled welding actually had a number dead bodies at the 2nd floor emergency exit location. It is suspected now that the emergency exit door wasn't unlocked!

A