Numerical Simulations of AMRI Hospital Fire Accident 2011: A Case Study

Most places are prone to fire disasters; in particular, they are a common occurrence in public buildings like hospitals and malls. Modeling the movement of building occupants during such mishaps is a great challenge. The problem is complex as it involves several parameters like smoke movement, time lag for the fire alarms to go off, age and condition of each occupant, number of passages or doors on each floor, the movement of other occupants in the close vicinity, etc. This study tries to analyze the AMRI hospital fire accident reported in 2011 using numerical tools. All the required data for simulations for this event are taken from the reported newspapers and from the reports available on this accident. The building is successfully modeled in a fire evacuation tool, FDS + EVAC. The ability of the model to predict the evacuation of occupants is tested with an assumption of two different stair width sizes. The predicted fractional effective dose (FED) and visibility on each floor with time are reported.