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.
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.
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.
When I worked in a high rise we had floor fire wardens per office, and we had to have a plan on who would carry injured or otherwise immobile people down the stairs. I had an ankle surgery at one point and had a designated carrier, and a secondary for when they were out of office.
To add to this, modern commercial buildings are built with specifically engineered “fire partitions” throughout the structure, such as stairwells and egress pathways. In the most critical areas these are usually 2 or 3 hour rated, meaning that they are designed to withstand a structural fire for 2 to 3 hours before becoming compromised.
In America at least, modern commercial construction is exceptionally fire-resistant.
Source: I build hospitals.
This makes a lot of sense. There’s a person in our building who has a limitation in his movement who I noticed works on the first floor. I only saw him going into the building (rather than out) once, but he entered a space on the first floor and a security guard held the door for him. I wondered, at the time, if that was a deliberate accommodation: if someone who can’t operate a heavy door works right next to the security checkpoint, there will always be someone available to hold it for them. Thanks!
My university used to have a bag thing that was made to slide people down the stairs.
They repeatedly asked me if it would require it in case of emergency but since arthritis makes walking painful but not impossible, especially when adrenaline kicks in and my choices are pain or a fiery death, I never had to practice with the thing.
My high-school was build against a hill luckily but since some of the evacuation included leaving through the windows if the hallway is on fire I’m assuming the idea was to lift disabled people through it.
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.
Emergency slides are a thing at some places, unfortunately usually only in places that focus on people with disabilities. I was at a vocational school that focused on people with disabilities for my training as a programmer, and all the buildings had spiral slides in the stairwells. The bonus was that you could also just use them as slides when moving down.
I’ve not ever worked in one place that had both good “fire marshal” training and had an emergency chair for escaping. I was one of those volunteering to be responsible for helping a buddy escape, yet I never even saw the chair. They described how to use it. We even got tours of all the emergency equipment to gain familiarity, except that.
Since then, no place I’ve worked with have even had a Fire Marshall program
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.
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.
I can help carry an old fashioned wheelchair down a staircase, but fancy electric ones can weigh hundreds of kilos.
An evacuation chair seems like a much better solution there.
…architect here: we design protected areas of refuge where mobilty-impared occupants can shelter in place until emergency services arrive to evacuate them from the facility…
…you’ll often see areas of refuge identified near elevator lobbies and equipped with hardened callboxes for emergency communication, or marked on the evacuation plan if they’re in a remote location…sometimes areas of refuge are pretty subtle if you don’t know to look for them: we design protected firewalls, structure, and building systems integrated into the facility so the biggest tells are usually callboxes, magnetic door hold-opens, or tracks for automatic fire curtains…
…when renovating older facilities, we do the best we can to modernise life safety within the limitations of existing infrastructure, but the general rule of thumb is that as long as you’ve improved upon what originally previously existed, you’ve satisfied your obligation even if it’s not at parity with new construction…
(it’s not uncommon for old facilities to have gone through a dozen or more life-safety modernisations since the advent of modern building codes, just palimpsested one-over-the-other as standards progressed)
Thanks so much for the info. I’m curious if you know about when these practices became common. The building I’m in for work, for example, has carpet in the hallways that looks like it was installed in the late 90s-2000s. The style of the outside seems to fit this range. Would you expect to see some, most, or all of these techniques in a building from that era? (This is in Cali, so likely early to apply the regulations I would think.)
…that’d take a deep dive into obsolete building codes to identify exactly when the concept was first introduced: BOCA, southern/standard, and uniform building codes all merged into IBC about twenty-five years ago so we’re talking about old paper code books from twentieth century…
…areas of refuge are closely tied to modern accessibility standards which arose from the ADA in 1990; i’m guessing they were widely introduced sometime in that decade, possibly earlier for high-rises or hazardous occupancies, but they were definitely part of 1997 UBC (which most of california enforced) and 2000 IBC…
(i started working professionally in 1993 and every project i worked on was fully accessible, but adoption varied across different jurisdictions and when i worked in california a decade later they were waaaay less accessible than texas)
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.
there are areas like stairwells where the kids with mobility issues waited (with adults, of course!)
Lol imagine if the adults were like “ok good, you stay here, I’m out, bye”
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!
