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Old 10th Nov 2016, 22:21
  #184 (permalink)  
RatherBeFlying
 
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Toronto
Posts: 2,558
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No it's a function of evacuating safely being fully informed of the outside conditions. The last thing you want to do is open the exits when that allows ingress of smoke and fire into the cabin, or if the passengers will exit into the pool fire. Those things will kill passengers more quickly.

This a complex area. For example wind speed has a significant impact on heat flux and heat location. Winds increase mixing and therefore increase the heat. Interestingly research has shown that in low to moderate winds heat is greatest on the windward side of the aircraft, in high winds heat is greater on the leeward side.

When you keep the doors closed, the increased cabin pressure actually assists in keeping combustion products out.

The important barriers are time to extinguish and heat resistant materials. Evacuation will not always be safer.
Aluminum is not heat resistant as the recently posted photos show. That kind of heat adjacent to the fuselage can breach it in seconds. Remember that fire increases exponentially and adventitiously. Seconds count.

I was in an older building where a minor basement fire reached an electrical supply shaft. The fourth floor was rapidly engulfed. Most fortunately the people in these units had self evacuated at the first sign of smoke.
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