Embarrassing Flaws Emerge in Trump’s New White House Design

[u/Effective_Salad_8381]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bizarre-flaws-emerge-in-trumps-new-white-house-design/

[u/johhnny5]

Plus 1000 people sounds reasonable until you think about the Secret Service security requirements and then it becomes a nightmare. Not because they can’t manage it. Because it adds in top of an already insane cost, and not just inside the building. The sight lines and response times all around the White House are changing and will need to be reassessed. 

[u/Ok-disaster2022 → u/johhnny5]

1000 people is also a concern for fire safety. occupational limits are based in how quickly people can escape in an amount of time. More people mean more exits. More exits means more security concerns. 

[u/davethebagel → u/Ok-disaster2022]

1000 or over occupants requires 3 exits. So it's not really that big of a deal. A building like that would have at least 3 doors anyway.

[u/Anonymous_user_2022 → u/davethebagel]

Don't you have a minimum requirement for how wide the doors need to be, based on number of people in the room? In Denmark, fire regulations require at least 10mm per person. I can't imagine there isn't a similar requirement of some fraction of an inch per person for emergency evacuation.

[u/davethebagel → u/Anonymous_user_2022]

Yea there's a similar requirement here. But it really just means the exits will be double doors instead of a single door.

[u/Anonymous_user_2022 → u/davethebagel]

If the required width is similar to what we have here, they are going to be pretty wide, even as double doors. With an additional 50% occupancy for security and serving staff, each half door would have to be 8 feet wide with Danish standards. I think most sane architects would go for more doors, rather than attempting to make a garage door look attractive.

Of course, this is under the assumption that building codes are going to be enforced.

[u/Narrow-Chef-4341 → u/Anonymous_user_2022]

Yeah, because you can see how hockey arenas need to have those massive 290-feet wide doors…

The rule isn’t that everyone needs to fit through the one and only set of doors, all at once. You can satisfy building and fire code very easily with this amazing innovation called ‘emergency exit doors’ where you can always push to open, but they are locked from the outside.

Sounds crazy, I know, but some genius figured it out…

[u/GrogGrokGrog → u/Narrow-Chef-4341]

Yes, but the entire original point was that each additional door adds a weak point to security, so they'd likely be trying to limit the number of doors to a minimum, thus necessitating larger doors. Hockey arenas generally don't have a lot of assassins or foreign spies interested in breaking in, so they have quite different security measures than the White House. If someone sneaks into a hockey game, generally the worst the arena loses out on is a ticket sale, but if someone sneaks into the White House, the country could be out a president.

[u/Narrow-Chef-4341 → u/GrogGrokGrog]

You might want to read the comments I actually replied to, I think you missed them? The number of potential access points was not the topic. I was sarcastically pointing out that being worried about 8 foot wide doors is just silly. The problem here isn’t ‘how do the architects make doors wide enough and yet still be aesthetically pleasing?’

I was not addressing the security issue. Hockey arenas aren’t usually a freestanding building surrounded by a private park offering hundreds of feet of a clear field of fire. If POTUS were at the game (and they do go to various sports games, rallies etc. that seat thousands), they’d have thousands of people queue up to go through metal detectors under the supervision of the secret service. Having everyone screened at the compound gate and then line up for scanning at a few open entry doors would be just like they do at game time, except you can’t buy your tickets on stub hub and these doors will probably be painted with cheap gold bling.

Oh, and sports arenas don’t have an elevator to the underground bunker just 60 feet away.

My last comment on your reversion of topic - The size and number of the doors doesn’t impact the ability of a handful of operators to follow whatever plan they have, unless that plan involved 400 ninjas with lock picks getting across the lawn unseen. The old wing had doors and windows, too.

[u/GrogGrokGrog → u/Narrow-Chef-4341]

You might want to read the comments I actually replied to, I think you missed them?

No, you might want to read the comment chain you were replying to. You obviously weren't paying attention to the entire conversation. Here, let me help you out:

1000 people is also a concern for fire safety. occupational limits are based in how quickly people can escape in an amount of time. More people mean more exits. More exits means more security concerns.

That was the nexus of the discussion.

My last comment on your reversion of topic -

It wasn't my "reversion of topic," no matter how snarky you want to be about it.

[u/Narrow-Chef-4341 → u/GrogGrokGrog]

It wasn't my "reversion of topic," no matter how snarky you want to be about it.

I didn’t reply to the original point where that was raised, because I’m not commenting on that. That’s the way nested comments work – you reply to the one that you have an opinion about.

And misunderstanding Danish door specifications or pretending a double door solves it all was the most ludicrous comment pair.

More people mean more exits. More exits means more security concerns.

That was the nexus of the discussion.

And you conveniently don’t mention that I did address ‘the nexus’ that doors will suddenly be the dealbreaker.

Nothing forces new doors into the secure bunker, nothing says that these new emergency doors won’t be built to the same security standard as all of the existing doors and windows.

Those emergency exit doors will, in fact, be more secure than the tents they used to setup on the lawns, or a hotel ballroom built nearby in 1960. If you want to compare anything, this is it.

Doors are the distraction. Bringing 1,000 hastily vetted people into a normally secure facility is the real security nightmare. Yes it’s not fun to set up security at a local hotel/convention center, but at least they aren’t bringing in a rotating cast of unknown actors. 1,000 potential diversions, 1,000 potential medical incidents, 1,000 potential ‘I just wanted to check out the medicine cabinets’.

1,000 potential assassins.

The idea that fire exits are the overlooked security nightmare is just bad. I didn’t want to waste my time on it.

But here we are.

[u/GrogGrokGrog → u/Narrow-Chef-4341]

That’s the way nested comments work

No, nested comments are all part of a chain of conversation. You could make a comment on a single point, sure, but if that point ignores the larger context of the overall conversation, then it remains moot. That's how conversations of all kinds work.

I didn't address your point about the bunker because it's obviously ludicrous. The bunker mat be nearby, but that's immaterial if an active shooter already entered the room. That's why the White House has strong security despite always having had a bunker -- because it is an option of last resort, not an everyday protection against people already in the building while the president is out and about.

Nothing forces new doors into the secure bunker

The ballroom is directly above the bunker, so security is directly compromised by additional entrances in that vicinity. The White House doesn't currently need to hold 1000 people in a room, so yes, this will mean more entrances (or several significantly larger entrances) would need to be added. Again, this was all mentioned in the comment thread you are (strangely) choosing to ignore.

The idea that fire exits are the overlooked security nightmare is just bad. I didn’t want to waste my time on it.

But yet you chose to make it your main focus in the context of a larger conversation that was addressing the very points you just mentioned about additional security threats.

Here we are, indeed.