They do exist, we have considered them but too expensive in our very old buildings. I don't know a great deal, but they have a protected power supply, smoke sealed doors and shaft, fire resistance and so on,

John

We have a couple of fire lifts in our 11 storey building. They are in protected shafts adjacent to the protected stairwells where we have the refuge areas.
They are in reasonably regular use under normal conditions when the main lifts are busy; in emergencies they would be used by individuals with PEEPs or by the fire service. They are controlled by our emergency response control centre.
During evacuation drills we have found that people, other than those with PEEPs, use the stairs- it seems that the message about not using lifts in the event of a fire has got through to most.

We use firefighting lifts as evac lifts

We have seven firefighting lifts in seven separate firefighting shafts at one very large building, and have developed a system where we use them to evacuate mobility impaired staff via these lifts, using a strict DRA incident command process and trained lift operators.

We also have a cat L1, phased fire alarm system - so we know about a fire immediately - and everyone likely to require help carries a pager so they can start to move to the ground floor even if the alarm is not sounding an evacuation in their work area

We never use the FF lift nearest the origin of the fire -even if it assessed as 'safe' and not involved in fire at that time, as that lift will always be reserved for fire service access. We assess it is likely we will still be evacuating when the fire service arrive.

We regularly drill and train all involved in this system, including table top exercises for those who carry out the risk critical DRA process of determining the correct FF lift and MOE to use on any given incident. Our local fire safety enforcement team were consulted & are happy with this process

The cost to set this system up was minimal, with some additional fire separation (four double 30m fire doors on holders) between two lift shafts where they discharge into a common lobby, additional signage and training.

We have also scrapped the vast majority of our evac chairs, as with seven FF lifts with three power supplies (all with a primary mains and secondary mains sources - & all backed up with a third generator supply) - it's unlikely that anyone will ever need to be bumped down the stairs again!! - touch wood :)