Originally Posted by
ethernal
Emergency lights often work off of the main circuits with a local battery (as this is the most reliable for a highly distributed system - it fully isolates the system - although clearly in this case it wasn't sufficient since people hung around for 10 hours (which to me was the big screw up here).
As I said though, if my understanding is incorrect and life safety systems DID fail - and the airport did not evacuate when this was recognized - than that is a huge failure and heads should indeed roll for that.
Strictly my opinion but from reports it seems like life safety systems failed too. Like you said that is a massive failure.
Honestly we will never know because this will be a huge cover up, but it seems like Atlanta Fire covered for the failure in life safety systems by isolating and attacking the fire right away.