Posted By Jane Riley Hi Joseph, We used staged evacuation to evacuate disabled & elderly residents. This involved moving them behind one or two (if possible) sets of fire doors in order to buy some time until there were more people available to aid with removing them to safety. This might be worth incorporating into your plan, but you need to ensure that the plan includes details of how evacuation from these areas will be accomplished. In other buildings we used evacuation chairs, but you need to ensure sufficient numbers of trained staff are available at all times when disabled people are in the building. If you are thinking of this method, try it out first - sitting in one and being transported down a staircase is terrifying! Still, it's better to get out terrified than not at all! Regards, Jane

Posted By Ken Taylor This is a surprise to me as we have always been advised by the fire authority to provide horizontal evacuation and safe refuges for non-ambulant disabled persons rather than putting them at risk from attempted full evacuation from the building by volunteers. Has your fire authority provided something in writing to back up this latest position?

Posted By Robert K Lewis The comment on the change of Fire Officer explains one of the common problems - the lack of a uniform approach by the FOs. Next week can bring a change of personnel and often a complete reversal of policy. It is no help in existing buildings but this is I believe a Design issue which the Planning Supervisor must address in the light of the DDA. I personally can never see evac chairs having a real place beyond 1 or 2 floors. I have seen some fire crews struggle even to do more than this. Fire Lifts or stairlifts are the only real solution Bob

Posted By Peter Rees Just a small word of warning on whatever policy you finally end up with as I recently (about 10 months ago) took part in some Fire Warden training provided by my local Fire Brigade (which was really good). However, one of the points raised by the trainer was on the subject of evacuation for disabled personnel. He quoted the following case:- Co X had in place a policy of using the evac chairs should an emergency arise. Everyone on site knew what responsibilities that they had, it was trained out and included as part of the site induction. As you can guess, they had a fire on the same day that they had a disabled (wheelchair bound) visitor - Mr A. The procedure went well, and everyone got out safely, and the Brigade put the fire out. All seemed OK until a couple of weeks later when Co X received a letter from Mr A's solicitor suing for compensation under DDA for 'embarressment caused during the evacuation'. Allegedly, Mr A was severely embarrassed by being carried out in front of the whole factory, even though he was safe and well. An out of court settlement was paid to the sum of £80k ! How do you get around this? Don't know, but is something that certainly needs to be picked up in the initial site induction brief. Anyone else care to comment? Pete

Posted By Graham Bullough Here are some comments based on experience with my employer's 5 storey headquarters building: As other responders point out, there is no consistency in the approach taken by fire officers. In the past some have insisted on the "everybody out immediately" approach, while others tend to be pragmatic and recognise that greater risks can be created by evacuating disabled people to outside, even after other people have left the building. Although we obtained some evac chairs some years ago, a subsequent risk assessment concluded that their use posed a risk to disabled passengers which was greater than that posed by fire - in relation to the design and use of this particular building and the likelihood and nature of a fire. Even with training and experience, employees who were operators and passengers found them somewhat unnerving to use, especially during the pivoting action at the top of each flight of stairs. (If anyone doubts this and has access to an evac chair plus an experienced operator, try being a passenger and then an operator yourself.) We foresaw greater problems if we had to use the chairs for disabled visitors without any experience of them. Another feature of the chairs is that they incline backwards when on flat ground, so the position then for passengers is not very dignified - hence the scenario about Mr A described by Peter Rees in his response to this thread. However, if the circumstances outlined have not become exaggerated by their respective narrators, it seems a nonsense that Mr A received £80k for suffering temporary embarrassment while being evacuated. By contrast, some people who suffer significant permanent injury and related adverse consequences for their lives receive much lower sums in compensation! As you will gather, our policy is to keep evac chairs for use as a last resort. The building has a number of designated safe areas with at least two alternative egress routes where disabled people congregate when the fire alarm rings. One important feature of these areas is that each has a dedicated 'phone link to our control room. This enables disabled people to notify where they are and subsequently be informed about the cause of the alarm, when known, and whether they need to move or be moved either downwards or horizontally within the building. Another important feature is that disabled people who stay in the designated areas are accompanied by able-bodied people for 2 reasons: One is to provide reassurance and moral support as it can be unnerving to see everybody else going out while the bells are ringing at high volume. Another reason is to assist with negotiating doors and/or operating evac chairs if there is a need to move from any of the designated areas. A final comment. Apart from one small fire incident some years ago (before a "no smoking" policy was imposed throughout the building) all evacuations have arisen from organised practices or false alarms. Therefore, in order to counter the understandable complacency which can develop, employees and managers need to be reminded from time to time of their need to respond to every alarm activation as an emergency! Graham B.

Posted By Ken Taylor Here is another response from the FireNet Forum: The requirement for the building management to ensure safe evacuation for the disabled, with or without the Brigade’s intervention, does not (in my opinion) preclude the use of refuges as intermediate places of relative safety. The purpose of refuges is not that you take the disabled there and leave them sweating in their little fire resisting box until the fire brigade gets there or the fire is out. They are intended to gain the time necessary to effect escape for persons whose speed of movement is restricted (e.g. to give you time to get the evac. chairs into operation). Like it or not, it is the responsibility for anyone who manages a building to ensure that disabled people (in wheelchairs, deaf, blind or whatever) therein can get to a place of safety in a reasonable period of time, with or without the Brigade’s help. Refuges can (again, in my opinion) form part of that strategy, BUT you have got to make sure that your passive fire protection and/or smoke control is completely sound – there are far too many useless fire doors and dodgy partitions around refuges.]