Posted By Robert Ball
I am aware of previous threads in relation to the duties for the evacuation of disabled persons from a building and that is our duty as an employer to evacuate them out of the building. I am however after practical advice on the best method of achieving this and examples of best practice.
We operate from 3 floors in a 17 storey building, the central core of the building (toilets and lifts) are "shared" facility between all occupants. There is a designated fire fighting lift which meets the requirements for these. Each lobby area is fire protected and are designated as refuges. The building itself is a modern building with automatic detection systems as well as built in sprinkler systems. The assessment for this is that it is a Low risk environment.
We have two members of staff who are wheelchair users, previously as part of their PEP they have been taken to the refuge area where their presence is reported to the Main fire warden who is the Building Manager. They are also issued with mobile phones for communication purposes. This had been previously agreed as the procedure for all tenants with both the building management company and the fire service.
We have now been visited by a different fire officer who has formally written to us to say this is no longer acceptable.

Both individuals have conditions which raise the risk of injury during transfer to evac chairs, one is prone to uncontrolled body movement (legs, arms, head and the other has degenerative bone condition which increase the risk of a bone injury during transfer.
We also have difficulty in getting "Volunteers" to act as fire wardens and at the moment it is unlikely we would be able to get sufficient numbers of volunteers who are suitable to assist in the evacuation.

Can you provide examples/advice of -

Evacuation chairs that are suitable and easy enough to cope with these medical conditions and are suitable for a 12 storey evacuation;

Who companies have managed to encourage sufficient number of volunteers (I suspect I need at least 10 trained to cover both persons at all times. They both work in small sections in different parts of the building so do not have enough "immediate" colleagues to help.

How they have dealt with other issues such as the potential delay to other building occupants with immediate evacuation against V's having higher number sat "risk" whilst waiting to begin evacuation once the majority have left.

Any other advice or assistance that you feel may be of benefit.

Posted By Makka
In my view the evac chair should be the final solution if there is no other way of evacuating the individuals concerned. We use ones from Paraid called Evac+chair, however there are companies that produce motorised devices which will carry a wheelchair and user negating the need to transfer. A web search will give several answers and most of these pieces of equipment are similar and work in the same way. One word of warning is that they are quite slow when moving down stairs, and can hinder the evacuation of able bodied people coming behind them. In a high rise multi storey building I could see this being a problem.
We have had similar issues with our Fire and Rescue, to the degree that they have stated they are "not fire and evacuation and that under the RRO unless life is at risk it is down to the employer and employee to evacuate the building."
You say there is a fire rated lift, surely the ideal solution would be to use this as the preferred means of esacape once communications have been established and the building incident officer has confirmed that there is no risk of people encountering a fire by using the lift.
Alternatives could however include horizontal evacuation to a safe part of the building furthest away from the fire alarm actuation. point

Posted By Darren J Fraser
Ban wheelchair users from site ? - go ahead..................just make sure that the company puts aside plenty of money for all the discrimination claims that will arise...............and be prepared to face the media, damage to reputation and loss of business.

Lets get this out in the open......people in wheelchairs are human same as everyone else, therefore they are entitled to the same levels of respect and treatment as everyone else.

Spaek to the members of staff concerned and ask their views on evacuation using an evac chair..chances are they will not be too impressed that you are looking at removing them from their wheelchair, all wheelchair users I have met in the past consider it a violation of their person that they are being removed from their wheelchair. What is the plan once they are out of the building and their wheelchair is still inside? Use the fire lift as stated previously if safe to do so.

Posted By Jim Walker
MieP,

"Reckon we go down the route of 'strongly advising' any mobility impaired persons of this & let them take their own decision whether to enter or not?"

And stand by for the inevitable DDA claim and associated aggro that Darren outlined above.

Sorry, but this is also not an option.

Posted By Jez Corfield
Folks,

This talk of fire lifts is fine, but in a mulitstorey office block you have 2 problems with relying on this:

1. Other people and in the building and the fire brigade may want to use it. It isnt so safe when it needs to go to 16 different floors.

2. The lift may need some expensive modifications, like altered controls and protected power supplies.

And some of you seem to be taking a 'you absolutely cant do that' point of view - has someone been beating you with the political correctness stick?

As employers we can only do so much, so when we run out of options - i.e. evac chairs wont work because of space/staff constraints, and the fire lift is not an option because of cost or practicalities just what do you expect to be able to do with people who have limited mobility?

We have as an interim measure, moved a member of staff with mobility issues to another office, we did not get any stick, as we had done everything reasonable to ensure their safety in that building, but there were no further options. Remember, safety is paramount, even when it comes to the DDA.

The solution we are now exploring is phased alarms and evacuation, its a much more complicated (and difficult to arrange) measure than total evacuation, but is more accommodating for people with mobility problems.

Jez

Posted By Robert Ball
Many thanks to you all for your responses thus far.
Just to clarify a couple of points -

It is not possible for them to work in a different location, the ground floor is occupied by another employer, we have the floors we rent only.

Horizontal evacuation is not possible due to the slim "tower" layout of the building.

Fire alarm system is common to all floors and cannot be utilised as a phased evacuation, its a one out all out job.

Evacuation lift has all of the necessary requirements including secondary power supply etc, there is no issue with this other than not being able to use it for evacuation!!

These are highly skilled and valuable members of our team and we are not looking to prevent them working, in fact the opposite applies.

I have used evac chairs before and would personally never want to go in one again.

All of the lifts descend automatically to the ground floor so it is not possible for the persons to evacuate themselves by this means.

Alison - I feel there may be some mileage to your idea for training staff to use the lift before the fire service arrive however as we do not own the entire premise I need to liaise with the building management company on this.

There must be a solution out there somewhere !!

Posted By Jeffrey Watt
Robert

If you read BS 5588-12:2004 section 14 Evacuation of disabled people, you might find that you have excellent physical controls in place to deal with your disabled evac namely,

Early detection
Sprinklers
Fire fighting lift

If I read between the lines the problem really is leveraging those assets through robust management procedures, frustrated by the fact you are multiple occupancy, therefore multiple cultures, multiple ways for thing to get messed up by ineffective communication between parties.

I think your solution is to work with the building manager to draw up an appointed person procedure for taking control of the fire fighting lift car to evac your staff in line with the guidance in the BS section 14.4 Evacuation using lifts.

Kind regards

Jeff

Posted By Crim
And fire fighting equipment i.e.ladders etc. will not reach above the 10th floor.