timelocks wroteI was wondering, assuming someone is accidentally locked in the vault. How does one open it from the inside? I can see how one can disable the time lock by pushing the actuator connected the lock, but then how are the bolts retracted? I see no mechanism to do this from the inside.
In nearly all cases it is impossible to open a bank vault door from the inside. In many cases the time lock can be disabled from the inside but all that does is enable the door to be opened (with the combinations) from the outside. In the case of doors with a pressure bar system, even if you could disable the combination lock there is no way to release the pressure bars from the inside. This is probably a good idea in the sense that if somebody does break into a vault (not via the door) you don’t want it to be easy for them to get out, or to open the door for even more burglarious activity.
I assume this is still generally true for bank vaults; any word from the experts?
A few “thin” vault doors which are actually designed as fire doors (and not bank vault doors) can be opened from the inside merely by operating the handle. I worked with one at a university computer center constructed in 1969 and we had such a Mosler door.
FWIW I tried to find a single case of somebody suffocating when locked in a bank vault but found no examples (excepting a case of murder, an employee who had a severe asthma attack, and an employee suffocated by the CO2 fire system that went off when she pulled the fire alarm inside the vault to get attention). This doesn’t mean vault ventilators are a bad idea, of course.
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