Q: We attended a recent event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. The building is beautiful. We sat in the mezzanine area. The row in which we were located contained at least 40 seats with no aisle between any of them. Other rows extended even further with no outlet except the aisle seats. Surely there are safety measures that we are not aware of. It seemed to us that this is a disaster waiting to happen if the place has to evacuated quickly. Do you have any information on the subject?
-- Celeste Wallace, Lawrenceville
A: The lower mezzanine area where the reader sat has 66 seats to a row and is within the National Fire Protection Association's Life Safety Code guideline of no more than 100 seats in a row, according to Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre officials. This style of seating, called continental seating, has been standard in theater design for performing arts and concert venues for more than 200 years, officials said. The building would not have received its certificate of occupancy if it had not met those and other safety requirements.
Q: Why does the weather page always list Venus first and Saturn last? It seems it would be more sensible to list the sun, then the moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and finally, Saturn.
-- William Johnston, Norcross
A: There is no particular order to the list, WSB-TV chief meteorologist Glenn Burns said.
Lori Johnston wrote this column. Do you have a question about the news? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or e-mail q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
About the Author