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Copyright © 2020 National Fire Protection Association®. All Rights Reserved.
NFPA 101®
®
Life Safety Code
2021 Edition
This edition of NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®, was prepared by the Technical Committees on
Assembly Occupancies; Board and Care Facilities; Building Service and Fire Protection Equipment;
Detention and Correctional Occupancies; Educational and Day-Care Occupancies; Fire Protection
Features; Fundamentals; Health Care Occupancies; Industrial, Storage, and Miscellaneous
Occupancies; Interior Finish and Contents; Means of Egress; Mercantile and Business Occupancies;
and Residential Occupancies; released by the Correlating Committee on Safety to Life; and acted on
by the NFPA membership during the 2020 NFPA Technical Meeting held June 8–29. It was issued by
the Standards Council on August 11, 2020, with an effective date of August 31, 2020, and supersedes
all previous editions.
This edition of NFPA 101 was approved as an American National Standard on August 31, 2020.
Origin and Development of NFPA 101
The Life Safety Code had its origin in the work of the Committee on Safety to Life of the National
Fire Protection Association, which was appointed in 1913. In 1912, a pamphlet titled Exit Drills in
Factories, Schools, Department Stores and Theaters was published following its presentation by the late
Committee member R. H. Newbern at the 1911 Annual Meeting of the Association. Although the
pamphlet’s publication antedated the organization of the committee, it was considered a committee
publication.
For the first few years of its existence, the Committee on Safety to Life devoted its attention to a
study of the notable fires involving loss of life and to analyzing the causes of this loss of life. This
work led to the preparation of standards for the construction of stairways, fire escapes, and other
egress routes for fire drills in various occupancies, and for the construction and arrangement of exit
facilities for factories, schools, and other occupancies. These reports were adopted by the National
Fire Protection Association and published in pamphlet form as Outside Stairs for Fire Exits (1916) and
Safeguarding Factory Workers from Fire (1918). These pamphlets served as a groundwork for the present
Code. These pamphlets were widely circulated and put into general use.
In 1921, the Committee on Safety to Life was enlarged to include representatives of certain
interested groups not previously participating in the standard’s development. The committee then
began to further develop and integrate previous committee publications to provide a comprehensive
guide to exits and related features of life safety from fire in all classes of occupancy. Known as the
Building Exits Code, various drafts were published, circulated, and discussed over a period of years,
and the first edition of the Building Exits Code was published by the National Fire Protection
Association in 1927. Thereafter, the committee continued its deliberations, adding new material on
features not originally covered and revising various details in the light of fire experience and
practical experience in the use of the Code. New editions were published in 1929, 1934, 1936, 1938,
1939, 1942, and 1946 to incorporate the amendments adopted by the National Fire Protection
Association.
National attention was focused on the importance of adequate exits and related fire safety
features after the Cocoanut Grove Nightclub fire in Boston in 1942 in which 492 lives were lost.
Public attention to exit matters was further stimulated by the series of hotel fires in 1946 (LaSalle,
Chicago — 61 dead; Canfield, Dubuque — 19 dead; and Winecoff, Atlanta — 119 dead). The
Building Exits Code, thereafter, was used to an increasing extent for regulatory purposes. However, the
Code was not written in language suitable for adoption into law, because it had been drafted as a
reference document and contained advisory provisions that were useful to building designers but
inappropriate for legal use. This led to a decision by the committee to re-edit the entire Code,
limiting the body of the text to requirements suitable for mandatory application and placing advisory
and explanatory material in notes. The re-editing expanded Code provisions to cover additional
occupancies and building features to produce a complete document. The Code expansion was carried
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