With all that is written about unnecessary and expensive regulation, it is easy to forget all the regulation written in blood. Those are the regulations that save lives — keeping fire exits clear of debris, making hallways and stairways wide enough to accommodate the numbers of people that might reasonably use them, or assuring that buildings with balconies have rails high enough to keep people from falling.
According to tourism statistics, the beautiful resort cities of Cancun, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, and Acapulco attract millions of tourists from all over the world annually — they are leading tourist destination cities.
Sun, sand, salt sea air, relaxation and natural beauty are what most tourists expect to find; not physical danger from unsafe conditions; not a fall from a balcony with an inadequate railing. As a matter of public record, in the last ten years, however, 49 U.S. and Canadian citizens have fallen over balcony railings. Only three survived.
Timothy Shane Flocco, a 21-year-old junior at West Chester University and a graduate of the Delaware County Christian School, died when he fell over the balcony at the Oasis Playa Hotel in Cancun in May 2000. His father, Thomas Flocco, said that U.S. Vice Consul Tony Kleiber told him on May 18, 2000, the day of his son’s death, that “50 percent of the balconies are too short, we had five deaths before Tim died in Cancun alone this spring.”
Obtaining accurate railing heights is not as easy as it might seem. Sandra Salazar, manager of the Oasis Playa Hotel initially told the Nogales International that the balcony railing height on the eight-story structure was 0.5 meters. Later she corrected that to 1.3 meters.
Two other pieces of documentation, one from the State Department and the other provided to the father of one of the victims as part of the documentation of the death, state that the railing height is 38 inches and 40 inches respectively, according to Flocco.
A search for open litigation revealed that a trial would begin shortly in the case of Kelly Gilbert, a survivor of a balcony fall from a Cancun hotel in June 1995. Nicholas Oelrich was not as lucky; he died in June 1995 as a result of a balcony fall at the Oasis Cancun, part of the same hotel chain.
Closer to home, Timothy Knoell of Phoenix died in 1988 when he fell over a balcony at his hotel in Mazatlan and, after years of litigation, the Arizona Supreme Court eventually ruled that the parents provided adequate evidence of an unsafe balcony.
The height of a balcony railing is very important according to Larry Litchfield, city of Phoenix building official, Development Services Department. He told the Nogales International that, “It is a matter of physics. Railings should be above the level of a person’s center of gravity so that if they stumble or fall against the railing they will not fall over it.”
The center of gravity is the point at which someone would lose balance or shift weight. A good way to visualize center of gravity is the location on a pencil where it can be balanced on a finger. Shift it one way or another and the pencil falls.
People do the same thing. With a low railing someone can be bumped, lose their balance, or stumble and, instead of a barrier, the railing becomes part of the sequence of events that catapults the person off the edge.
“While each city in the U.S. establishes its own regulations regarding rail height, 42 inches is fairly standard for commercial construction including hotels. A 42-inch guardrail will be adequate for males less than about 6’7”, said Litchfield.
“In single-family dwellings, the standard is currently 36 inches, although there is a proposal to change that to a minimum of 42 inches as well because people are growing taller.”
Litchfield, a former member of the International Code Council for Means of Egress Committee, has participated in writing engineering codes for hotels and commercial buildings all over the world. He is also recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts in the field and testifies as an expert witness.
Litchfield said, “The codes on the height of railings are not new. For the most part, they have been in place pushing half a century. The only change that has occurred is the spacing of the intermediate railings.
“Regulations like the Uniform Building Code or the International Code are a minimum standard — 42 inches is a minimum standard. The Standard of Care must also be taken into account. The Standard of Care may include environmental conditions from which you may wish to take precautions.
“For example, the owners of the Empire State Building found that a 42-inch railing was inadequate and the entire balcony is caged. If the establishment or community encourages drinking, they may find that they require higher railings or enclosed balconies.
“For most people, a 42-inch railing requires an effort to get over. In the U.S., we have few deaths from people falling over railings and those almost always involve someone sitting on a railing or intentionally jumping over, or being thrown over.”
An unconfirmed report places the railing height of the hotels in Mexico where the railings are short as low as 23 inches, well below the recommended 42-inch minimum in the UBC.
Litchfield said that several countries, including Taiwan, Japan and several South American countries, are considering the 2000 International Code, which is a consolidation of the three model code groups currently in place throughout the U.S. He said, “… Mexico is entertaining using parts of it.”
On any given Spring Break week approximately 110,000 young people flock just to Cancun to have a good time. They, and their parents, trust travel agents, as professionals, to book them into safe hotels, but a small group of travel agents repeatedly book into hotels where a pattern of unsafe conditions and death has been established. They continue to advertise.
Inadequate rail height is life-or-death at 20 stories, patently unsafe and every year people die.
One objection raised is that people are responsible for their own safety. That is only true if the risks are understood. Initial research found only one travel agency that listed inadequate balcony height as a potential risk factor and that was as a result of a court decision.
From Student Tours in Phoenix: “Balcony railings in Mexico may be of less standard heights than in the United States. Be careful of low railings. A fall from any height can result in serious injury or even death.”
The second objection is that people are drinking and fall over railings. There are many environments that encourage parties — Las Vegas, Atlantic City, cruise ships, ski resorts — but few accidental deaths from falls over balconies.
One can only imagine the outrage that would occur if two people a year toppled over railings to their deaths in the cruise ship industry.
Inadequate railing height is an insidious risk because most people are completely unaware of the danger. The safety standards in the U.S. have been in place for so long, that balcony railings are assumed to be inherently safe.
In the case of Firestone tires, 88 people died before the nation demanded accountability.
Barbara F. Johnson is a reporter for Nogales International.
