From mobility scooters to tables: All corridors in the senior complex must be empty for fire safety

Coby Dijksma (88) had to remove the flower wreath from her front door, Nico Renes (76) is no longer allowed to park his electric wheelchair in the hallway and Niny Bolhuis (90) is relieved that the large, yellow butterfly painting next to her door is tolerated.

Strict fire safety rules require housing associations to clean up corridors and communal spaces in their apartment complexes and apartment buildings. Mobility scooters and cycling in corridors are prohibited, according to the ‘Decree on construction works Living Environment’ that came into force in July 2024. Also no wooden tables, chairs and cupboards. Doormats? Paintings? No larger than half a square meter.

The rules are a leave consequence of the fatal Arnhem flat fire from the beginning of 2020 when two teenage boys played with fireworks in the entrance hall. A discarded couch caught Vlam and the fire led to the death of a father (39) and son (4) who had just got into the elevator. The Dutch Safety Board called on corporations, municipalities and fire brigade to take their responsibility. The fire safety rules of last year clarified what was previously only generally described: keep the escape routes free.

The housing associations of the Netherlands have been busy with it since then because they have added thousands of apartment complexes and apartment buildings and everywhere they run the corridors, whether or not accompanied by the fire brigade. They send letters to residents, paste warning stickers with ultimatums on plants and mobility scooters lying around and, if necessary, they remove those things and store them elsewhere, explained in a new letter.

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Empty corridors

Especially in apartment complexes for seniors, corporations are busy, because residents look for each other more often in the corridors, they more often plant a cozy seat at the door to wait for the regional taxi and store their mobility scooter in the hallway next to their door so that they can drive away.

The consequences are visible in Emtinckhof, a Loosdrechts apartment complex for the over-65s, the ownership of the Woonzorg Nederland Corporation. Empty corridors on all the floors. There are no more tables and chairs on the wide -measuring overflow of higher floors: the weekly craft morning has moved to another departure, says fire safety adviser of the Edzard Akkerman (53) corporation. In addition to the doors of residents, there and there are a tolerated painting-on-canvas and on the ridges of their windows there are dolls and mini plants that do not make Akkerman nervous.

You can also stumble over a small flowerpot if you have to make your way through a corridor full of smoke

Woonzorg Nederland is implementing the same austerity in all its six hundred senior complexes, he says, and that regularly leads to complaining residents. “It looks like a hospital here,” “just a prison,” “we are not in East Germany, do we?” Akkerman understands those people: it has to. “Gangs are escape routes and they must be free from things. You can also stumble over a small flower pot if you have to make your way through a corridor full of smoke.”

The fire brigade still identifies dangerous situations in apartment complexes, says Herma Nijkamp, spokesperson for the Netherlands Fire Department. Seats and trash cans block fire -resistant doors that as a result cannot close in the event of fire: smoke and fire spread further. And the fire brigade still encounters mobility scooters and “excessive decoration” in the corridors.

Housing corporations also find fire safety essential and yet they call their assignment “tricky”, a “search” and even a “struggle” because well, pleasantly old is about more than just safety. “We always say: you don’t just live in a house, it is also your thúís,” says spokesman Annet Postma of housing association De Alliance. “And at the same time we must now perform if residents have made something cozy together.” Corporation Habion speaks of a “collision of the world with the system world. Community formation is also a great asset.” Woonzorg Nederland has a budget for brightening up spent residential complexes, but in a risk -free way. This is called ‘Fire -safe cosiness’, a term that uses more corporations. Because waiting for the regional taxi in the entrance hall next to the sliding doors is also possible on a KEK bench made of metal. )

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Headache file

Headache file remain the mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs and bicycles. According to the fire brigade, the Netherlands has more than three hundred thousand mobility scooters and that will only make it more due to the aging population. They are not only a stand-in-the-way but also, because of their batteries, form a fire risk themselves. “A fire in a mobility scooter can make an escape route unusable within a few minutes,” says Nijkamp from the Netherlands Fire Department. They are also erected from foam rubber and plastics that lead to poisonous smoke in the event of a fire.

Here in Emtinckhof, Woonzorg Nederland was able to curb the risk: on every floor there is a lockable, fire -resistant parking facility for electric vehicles. But not all residential complexes have the space for that, so that corporations sometimes put a parking facility outside the building Some residents put the mobility scooter in their own apartment, no matter how risky.

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But even in the case of an indoor, nearby, the problems are not out of the world. Nico Renes, resident of Emtinckhof for fourteen years, is moving per electric wheelchair. His legs became shattered when a car hit him 26 years ago. He always put the wheelchair right next to his front door. Inside his home he has no place for it, “there is already my normal wheelchair”. He puts the electric in the storage. It is just twelve meters from its front door, but every meter counts with shattered legs. In his apartment he first sits down in his normal wheelchair, then he rolls to the garage and he switches. “But that also takes a lot of legs,” he says. “I stay at home on bad days.”

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