Escaping From Attic/Loft Window

It's crucial for how I've set up the end of my new short story that a character escape a burning house. Originally I was just going to have him leave through the back door just in time, but for various reasons it's much better to have him cower in the attic. The problem is, he obviously needs to escape to tell the story. I'm not sure if one can escape from an attic window. Would it be too far a drop? The type of attic/loft I have in mind is like this:



Am I overthinking this or do I need some kind of special fire safety installation? Could one theoretically escape from a window in an old-style attic/loft? I suppose one could, but I don't want it to be comically exaggerated.

I find it odd how I often write fantasy, but I don't understand the basics of certain moments of domestic action.

 

How many floors is the house? And what's outside, any trees/bushes/anything else soft to land in? From what I've read a fall of 20-30 feet would cause serious injuries, more than that would probably be fatal. But so much of it is in the details, what you land on and even the exact angle that you land at. People have survived falls of much, much higher than that.

 

It's an old fashioned two-story house in a rural location with bushes and whatnot. Admittedly I haven't dwelt on the surroundings of the house in detail other than to describe a lawn and gravel pathway. It's not as if he's going to leap from the fifth floor of a block of flats. I imagine he'd break the window (skylight?) with one of the copious objects in the attic, thrust himself up and over it, then clamber over the roof to reach a nearby tree? I suppose there could be an outbuilding nearby, too. Hopefully not that outlandish?

 

My bedroom window in the house I grew up in opened onto the roof of the breezeway, a little roof connecting the garage to the house. I could clamber out onto that roof, onto the garage roof, and from there climb down a tree that was right up against the house.

My sister's bedroom window opened onto the roof of the deck. It was a lot more difficult, but when my friends and i were in our acrobatic prime in high school, we could climb down the support post at a corner of the deck onto the railing and jump from there down to the ground (or just step onto the deck).

 

You could always make him the thoughtful sort who supplied upstairs rooms with portable escape ladders as recommended by his local fire department. Failing that, consider: I am 5'7". When I raise my arms over my head, the top of my head is at my elbow. My forearm and hands are about 14 inches long if my fist is curved into a grip. Just to make the math easy, let's say that makes my full length, arms outstretched, 7'. Say the drop is 20 feet, window sill to ground. I hang by the window sill. The ground is about 13 feet below my toes, closer, if I'm pointing my toes and have big feet. Drop, collapse at the knees and hips to absorb energy, and roll. It's doable.

 

Especially if there are hedges blow. Of course, you don't know what might be inside the hedges, just gotta drop and hope.

 

If it's a straight drop from the window the person might be in trouble but in many houses you could slide down the roof under control and possibly dangle yourself (no jokes please) from the edge. This could result in maybe a drop of only 10 feet or less.

 

Not possible if the roof is anywhere near as steep as the ones in your photos.

In architecture and construction, roof pitch (or slope) for houses is typically measured in inches of rise per foot of horizontal coverage. A fairly typical American ranch-style house has a roof pitch of about 3:12 to 4:12. Those roofs are possible to scramble around on. The house I live in, which is also the house I grew up in, has a roof with a pitch of 6:12. When I was a kid, wearing sneakers with soft rubber soles, I could move around on the roof without sliding off -- if I was very careful. As an adult today, I won't even try it with a safety harness and ropes.

The attics in your photos appear to have a pitch of about 12:12. Nobody is going to clamber around on that -- all he'll do is slide off. That's a 45 degree angle. The eave (the lowest edge) of a two-story house is likely about 18 to 20 feet above the ground. If you fall or jump from that height, you're almost certainly going to break something -- maybe several somethings. If the intention is to have this person escape more or less intact, then he'll need something like the rope escape ladder suggested by Catriona Grace.

 

Thanks for the information. So, I have to ask, is there a case for simply suggesting that he could scramble his way down by a mixture of the helpful ways already described? The story's in first person, so I'm not going to go into the kind of technical detail given by SapereAude. The narrator would, I reckon, be much stricken by the memories of his events to go through all of that. In my view, that's a valid way of approaching this. I'd also say it's valid just to assume, unspoken (read: unwritten), that the roof is doable in terms of height. I don't think a writer needs to give all the technicalities. By the way, I should've included an image of the house in question. Obviously this isn't the real house and I'm just using it as inspiration. I imagine it as being fairly squat and being in an old style with a lot of vegetation around it. Or is this all just wishful thinking and I need to redo the ending?

And yes, this is the same image from my thread about the wine cellar!


Edit: I imagine he climbs out of the window via means already described and comes out of the back to escape into the fields at the rear of the house or side of the house. The front lawn, let's say, is well occupied...

 

Is the window actually in the slanted part of the roof, or could there be one over the smaller roof (in that picture)? If it was over the roof of a wing or a garage or attached shed or whatever, they he could slide/scramble down it and drop off the edge. Even an uncontrolled slide to the edge would slow a fall considerably.

 

Well, admittedly I haven't describe any kind of outbuilding, if you're referring to the attached section. In my story the attic is accessible from a hatch with drawstring and retractable ladder. It's a fairly big open space, so I'd have to say it's in the primary roof space instead of any kind of attachment.


This is pretty embarrassing, but there you go. I have no idea if the skylight/window could be in either of those types of directions. If no. 1, this would just be as I've drawn it but probably at the back of the house instead of the front. If no. 2, I could see him scrambling down on to an outbuilding, but I assume the opening window is built within the roof tiles instead. I should repeat that because of the nature of the story, the narrator isn't saying anything close to this level of detail. My view has just been to leave the house up to the reader's imagination for the most part. Still, I want this to at least make sense.

 

Even if he comes out through the slanted part of the roof, there could be a carport or shed roof, or a covered porch or something with a roof that he could land on and scramble down that for a short drop to the ground. Maybe even onto the roof of a parked car. In fact it could be the car of whoever is threatening him (if that works out story-wise, I have no idea) in which case he might be very thankful it's there.

How about the possibility of climbing down the ivy? If it's old and has thick stems (whatever they'd be called) I think they'd hold him. I had to climb on my garage roof a couple years ago and cut down a bunch of it, man talk about a difficult job!! It was like a thick netting, in places the stems were thicker than both my thumbs together, and rooted solidly into the mortar. I think I could have climbed it. Of course it could be more exciting if he makes it halfway down before it pulls loose with a tearing sound and slowly dumps him on the ground. I think it would lower him rather slowly as the hundreds of roots gradually tear loose. Then he'd just have to untangle himself from it, which could be a massive job.

 

Indeed. There could be a few options. On second thought, however, going into the attic at the end of my story might not work that well as it needs to be spontaneous and have some force behind it. In short, the protagonist Mervyn and his partner Keith have their home vandalised and, later, burned by villagers (spoilers!). For it to have flow, Mervyn should lose Keith in the moment as the mob break into the house, then flee out the back into the fields. What he wouldn't do is hide himself in the attic knowing that his partner is in danger. I think it's better with continuous action, so this reassessment may have eliminated the need to go into the attic at all. For various reasons I need to have Keith's whereabouts after this incident be ambiguous. Obviously the attic is a good hiding spot for both of them, but the story just wouldn't work with that. Not to mention that the villagers are specifically looking for what's in the attic in this story. I think I just need to have a bewildered and fearful Keith flee instead of making the conscious choice to head up to the attic.

 

If I were escaping from either location in the last picture you posted, I think I'd slide down the roof and catch my feet on the rain gutters. From there, I would go over to where a gutter drain pipe is, and shinny down the pipe to the ground. This is assuming, of course, that a house that old would have a substantial steel drain pipe instead of the puny aluminum ones they have nowadays.

 

That's not a bad idea but based on the pitch of the house, and the fact the character would be escaping an unexpected emergency, they probably wouldn't have time to do that, they'd jump out and slide straight down (unless they have a Boba Fett or Batman suit). But for a lot of roofs without a steep pitch, I think most would take some time to explore those type of options.

 

I didn't go through all of the comments/replies (limited computer time) but I can tell you that as a property owner/landlord, I am required to have a platform outside of a third storey window where a tenant can escape from the house and wait for the fire trucks to arrive.

I went further and I included a drop down rope type ladder - it's not meant to be used regularly, just a one-time escape route type device. As I understand it, it is supposed to be replaced every ten years and after each use although I'm not sure how anal the property inspector people are about that stuff.

One of the things I am wondering is if you can have your character in the basement as opposed to on an upper floor? Most basements - especially older ones - have one exit route which is the stairs leading upstairs. When I get an older property, I always have to put windows into any bedroom I build in the basement so the tenants have an exit route. The only room that doesn't require a exit window is the bathroom.

 

From looking at the house picture you have posted posted to me this appears to be an old English house (pre 1900) with no basement and it originally would have had no skylight or windows in the roof and depending on the village it is in may never be allowed to have any kind of window /skylight (it's something that needs planning permission in the UK and not allowed on all buildings in all areas). If this has its original roof then this may have loose tiles which could not only cause a person to slip but could also fall off the roof either before or after the person.
Some buildings of this period do have a little enclosed porch with a pitched roof at the main door or an open sided roof often this would be pitched (pointed).
Most houses I have seen of this age have paths immediately next to the house with either garden, drive, road or field beyond.

If this is based on or in a real village then use things like Street View or estate agent websites to find out what the house is REALLY going to be like.

I know you mentioned that you don't need to go into much detail but when I'm stuck on a description I find it can be useful to write the equivalent of a short Wikipedia page, especially the top section that often only has a handful of lines.

 

That was the first thing I thought, but there could be a window in the gable end. Maybe aslo there's an outhouse or porch he could jump onto from there, or the ground could be really soft freshly dug flowerbeds or something.