Why Bother Breaking the Glass, and What Happened to the 13th Floor Anyway?

This past week we were on vacation in Florida. It was great . I got to swim, walk on the beach look for treasures, hunt for coconuts (more about this in an upcoming blog), and visit the Miami Seaquarium (home of Lolita, the Killer Whale). One day as I was walking down the lobby of the building we were staying in, I spotted a fire “cabinet”. The cabinet had a glass door that held a large valve, a fire extinguisher, and a long water hose with a nozzle. At the top of the glass door was a red label that read: “IN CASE OF FIRE BREAK GLASS” and at the bottom of the door hung a long metal pipe that was chained to the door frame which, I guess, you’re supposed to use as a hammer in order to break the glass.

As we were standing  by the elevator waiting for the doors to open up, I couldn't resist the temptation and so I tugged lightly on the hammer chain which made the glass door swing right open.
So why would you want to break the glass if you can simply open the door instead?  Inspired, I decided to check out all the fire cabinets on each floor of the building to see if this was just a coincidence.

I started on the ground floor (LL) and made my way all the way to the top (22 floor), all the while taking notes on how many cabinets were open vs. closed (see table below).  The tally: 9 opened and 12 closed, which may indicate that they would prefer if you didn’t break approximately half of the cabinets in case of emergency.

Floor Number and Closet State (L=Locked, O=Open)

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	-	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
O	L	L	L	L	O	L	L	L	O	L	O	-	O	O	O	O	O	L	L	L	L

Interestingly, after I was done checking the fire cabinet on the 12th floor and then got back in the elevator to go up to the next floor, to my surprise, I discovered that the elevator panel didn’t have a button for floor number 13. In fact, the building didn’t even have a 13th floor!



So I researched it a bit and I discovered that in some parts of the US and elsewhere in the world, builders and elevator manufacturers deliberately avoid having a 13th floor. Instead, they go directly from 12 to 14.

What's wrong with the number 13? The practice of avoiding the number 13 is based on a superstition that it is an unlucky number.  So the actual reason for not using it in buildings is because superstitious residents would refuse to live in apartments located on that floor.

Now, as you can see from the photograph of the building, it clearly has the 13th floor.  So it appears that the tenants don’t really mind living on that floor, so long as everyone else agrees to continue calling it floor number 14.



There it is in all its glory…but mum’s the word!