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.
We die.
When I was in engineering school, I was lucky enough to have a based professor. He would start lessons by describing a tragedy. A paraplegic burns to death in a stairwell, another cracks their skull after being pushed down the stairs. He would then show us solutions to these issues from long before the tragedy. Slides to carry you down, bags you sit in and use the rails as a slide. Fire safe rooms that you could shelter in and can be accessed from the outside.
This also does not simply affect us disabled fucks. Say there is an earthquake, and you shatter a leg, or worse, your hip. You are now in the same stairwell as the rest of us.
Also, god help you if you’re overweight. When my legs stopped working, I gained 200lbs. I knew then and know now that if I am in a burning building, I will be the last one out, if I get out.
They could design the stairwell like in a cartoon so that the steps go diagonal to make the entire thing a one-way slide.
Then you can go wheeee! during a fire escape.
Then just open the standpipes (for safety 😜 ) and turn them into water slides!
As an able overweight guy, if I get hurt or something there’s no way anyone is helping me get out in an emergency.
Former firefighter here: myself and my colleagues worked very hard on our strength and fitness. Dragging a person who weighs 250 + lbs over carpet , while wearing gear+ scba is the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done. I thought my heart was going to explode once I got to the yard and I only moved from the back to the front (plus some turns) of a residence before I got helped.
Which especially sucks as 250 for anyone over 6’ is barely above average. At my peak, I was 320
My university had those bags. I found them… Optimistic
Im just glad they acknowledged us. Like, even the degrading alleyway wheelchair ramps are better than a staircase with no handrail, but at least they put in the literal minimum effort. Same goes with cloth masks.
Honestly I agree. And I don’t consider them degrading if the purpose is to save your life. I find it humbling (maybe nowthe right word) that the plan is to have multiple people work together just to make sure you don’t get left behind. But in an emergency you do need multiple people’s help which is why I find them so optimistic.
I’m also happy I don’t have to use them or practice with them. It doesn’t seem very comfortable and honestly a bit scary.
Usually the evacuation plan includes people with wheel chairs going into the stairwells. Stairwells can withstand fire longer than the rest of the building. And, yes, there are usually people designated to carry or help those with mobility issues.
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In my workplace, there are a few options: When a disabled person is on a certain floor above ground floor, there will be a special chair they can be put in, that allows one person to maneuver them down the fire escape. Multiple people in the company are trained on the use of this contraption and are notified before the evacuation is necessary.
When there are more wheelchair bound people in the building than there are evacuation chairs available, they’ll have to be taken to the fire escape behind double fireproof doors, where the area is pressurized with clean air. There the firemen will evacuate them.
A third option is the area where the elevators are. It closes automatically and has a fireproof door where you can wait in front of the elevators for the firemen to evacuate you using the elevators (or otherwise).
Normally there aren’t that many wheelchair bound people in the building that need those chairs, because visitors are normally confined to the ground floor. On a floor where a disabled person used to work (now retired), one of those chairs was permanently available.
Edit: the ones we have resemble these https://evac-chair.com/
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).
It’s 2024, why in the hell is nobody designing skyscrapers with fun slides spiraling all the way to the bottom?
McDonald’s PlayScraper
Concepts exist. Not sure if any are being used other than as a meme though.
I used to work in a school with disabled kids, so I did a few fire drills.
As other people here have said, there are areas like stairwells where the kids with mobility issues waited (with adults, of course!) during fire alarms. Fire crews would’ve been told about us and come and got those kids first in the event of an actual emergency.
That’s part of my job. Our district covers several cities, so several different fire departments. Some have suggested meeting spots on each floor. Some have provided slings. Our schools all have evac chairs. They suck and they’re dangerous. If you can have someone carry your chair,someone else block traffic, and one or both of them help you back into your chair afterwards bottom bumping down the stairs is what i would do. Otherwise, go to the meeting spot.
We had a few evac chairs, but I think you needed training to use them and I never had the training!
One thing I haven’t seen in the thread yet, is that there ARE elevators which are intended for use during fire-related evacuations. I’ve been in buildings where signs by the elevators make it known that during evacuations you are SUPPOSED to use them.
I don’t know the specifics, but I would assume these have self-monitoring sensors to allow the elevator control system to determine whether it is affected by whatever is going on.
I suspect the way they work also changes, instead of prioritizing getting around different floors, the computer would start shuttling them up and down specifically to get people from each floor down to ground level. No-one already in the elevator gets to pick what floor they’re going to.
Modern buildings are constructed in a way that significantly slows the spread of a fire, and I would assume that the machinery and shaft of evacuation elevators, doubly so.
And same as any elevator, they are built using a level of redundancy that means several cables can fail without issue, as well as emergency brakes that arrest the fall of the cabin should the worst occur.
I saw one place that had a dedicated device in the stairway that was meant to help carry wheelchair bound people down the stairs.
Something like this IIRC https://siamagazin.com/the-mobile-stairlift-a-portable-stair-climbing-wheelchair/
I work in a nursing home. This is what we have for this exact situation.
I believe there should be slide sheets/ sleds and/or evacuation chairs in place for this.
Yes, we had a lot of fun with those at our last fire drill.
What a depressing thread. Fuck people who can’t walk I guess.
At my office each stairwell has a riding chair at the top. It’s only three stories though.
I don’t know, but my boss promised me that if there was a fire, she’d carry me down the stairs.
… You know, if there’s time.
I’ve seen contraptions to carry people down stairs. These were meant to be carried by two able people.
Or two able people might just have to carry a disabled person down the stairs without a contraption.
I hope I’m remembering this right. Sounds humiliating but also problematic if people aren’t trained to do this and/or leave the building without knowing or caring.
The building manager should (and may be legally required to) have a fire department approved emergency plan that specifically addresses this question. Usually, the plan will be for you to await rescue.
A modern, up-to-code high rise building will have designated “places of refuge” that are designed to withstand heat and smoke, such as a pressurized stairwell with fire doors. In older buildings that don’t have something like that, the plan might call for disabled people to go to the nearest (unprotected) stairway, or it might call for them to remain in their office/apartment and “defend in place”. If possible, call 911 (or equivalent) to notify rescuers of your location.
I’ve been to a few older office towers where the plan was basically “in the event of a fire, people who can’t walk down stairs will die horribly, so those people are not allowed above the ground floor.”
Having a coworker with one leg, it meant a lot of shuffling meetings around to get the meeting room on the ground floor, but they were very meticulous about it.
That’s not a terrible emergency plan honestly
Kind of limits their upward mobility, I would imagine.
And I absolutely intended the double entendre, because I can see how that could limit the ability to get into more executive positions, if the ceo or vp is required to come to the ground floor in order to talk to them, instead of two doors down the hall.
