We had a false alarm go off in the building where I work last week. The elevators automatically shut down forcing the use of the fire escapes. The building is 22 floors. I was lucky in that I’d just taken the elevator to the first floor to step outside on a break. When they finally let us back in, I wondered what someone with mobility issues is expected to do had the building been on fire. Just die? Have a kind soul carry them? With most people wfh at least a couple of days per week, this seems really dangerous for anyone who might get stranded.
I’d take a step back and say no, this isn’t actually as bad as some of the comments seem to suggest.
The vast, vast majority of building emergencies are safe to shelter in place. Modern building codes generally prevent fires from spreading too far, and isolate smoke to a specific place in the building.
Then, for certain types of catastrophic disasters, being able bodied doesn’t actually help, as people can still get stuck and need rescue from firefighters anyway.
You need some kind of disaster Goldilocks zone where things are bad enough to where quick evacuation is helpful and things aren’t so bad that evacuation isn’t feasible, before it starts making a difference.
And in those situations, many buildings do have evacuation chairs in the stairwells. And stronger people can assist carrying down the stairs, too. There are a lot of variations on two-person or single person carries that depend on exactly what mobility limitation there is. If you live or work with or around people with mobility issues, it’s worth looking them up, maybe taking a first aid/survival class or something.
They told Grenfell Tower residents to stay in their rooms as well.
That did not go well.
They would have been fine if the building had actually been designed properly but because it hadn’t been designed properly a lot of deaths occurred. Staying in your room is a good tactic if you’re in a well-designed building because they will contain the fire to a single.
The trouble is you don’t know if you are in a safe designed building, or if you’re in the building designed by an idiot, built by the lowest bidder and coated in paraffin wall paneling for aesthetic effect.
And until one of them burns down and kills 80-odd people, nobody really cares to check.
Yup, Grenfell was one of two disasters that I had in mind in my answer, that was bad enough that able bodied people needed firefighter rescues (or where rescue was futile and they were basically doomed from the start).