I did today at a local sporting goods retailer that sells stuff for bass fishing professional shoppers. The north entrance was locked when I went to the store, so I had to walk around to the front. When I was ready to leave I decided I was going to exit that north door.

These particular doors were designed as entry/exit doors into and out of the building. People gave been using these doors for years.

They were both locked from the inside. Keyed deadbolts. There was a pushbar to open one door. It wouldn't work. An Exit sign is over this doorway, but it wasn't lit.

I went and got a manager. He didn't want to get inconvenienced and said he'd check into it. I explained that the law requires employees and customers to have exits open up in an emergency, but he said it was a corporate thing and he'd check into it. He wasn't interested. Okay. No problem. I walked away and I called the local Fire Marshall, explained the problem, and in ten minutes he met me at the front door. I walked him to the problem doors. He saw that they were locked from the inside and wouldn't open. He also saw multiple exit signs not lit and checked other exit doors. All were locked. Not only were they deadbolt locked, they were also electronically locked. Fire Marshall was pissed and went to seek out the manager. I followed. He confronted the manager and the manager unlocked the doors with his key, but had to go back and get an electronic key card to actually open them. This pissed off the fire Marshall even more.

When I left, the fire marshall was writing a citation and told the manager that a report of the violations are also sent to OSHA and that someone from OSHA would be contacting the manager for their investigation. He also said he'd be back tomorrow and all the exit signs better work or he could force the business to close until they were.

I waited for the fire Marshall to finish reaming out this store manager and I gave him my contact info if he needed it. He told me the fine from the city for this kind of deliberate violation is usually serious and substantial, but they investigate the approved plans and submittals first to see if the exits were ever deemed emergency exits or ingress/egress exits and determine if they changed anything without submitting requests to the city. I looked up OSHA fines this evening and found examples where they fined businesses over a hundred thousand dollars for locking two or more emergency exits. Damn.

Any fireman here understand the laws about locking exits? What happens if a business does that and gets busted by a fire safety inspection? My interest in this goes back to when my dad was a fireman back in the 60`s and I remember him being upset at carrying out some people who died in a fire because the business had locked the exit doors. I heard him say to my mom, "There ought to be a law against that. That business owner should have to go to jail for those people dying." I guess the laws were much more loose back then.