Looking for advice, as a landlord, we are carrying out unaanounced fire drills in a multi-tenanted building, where there are wheelchair users, there are Evacuation chairs available and we ensure there are PEEP plans in place and tenatns have trained persons to use the equipment. Additionally the lift landing are a place of relative safety with fire doors to the corridor and stair well, there are no fire fighting lifts available/

my question is during a drill would you expect the dissabled person to be put in to a chair and evacuated during this dril. Noting that we are the landlord and do not have direct responsibility for the PRM plan or the users.

Originally Posted by: mikej.1981

we are carrying out unaanounced fire drills in a multi-tenanted building, where there are wheelchair users

Can we start that your plan for unannounced drills is not in the spirit of co-operation with tennants.

You may instill panic and as such place the vulnerable at increased and unneccessary risk through being forced in to using equipment intended as life saving. Whilst evacuation equipment has a purpose there are two occassions for use - familiarisation and when there is life threatening danger present.

For context you never see an unannounced fire drill at a shopping centre, hospital, football ground, block of residential flats, student accommodation, hotels....

If your building is residential what if the tennant is - in the bath, just got in to bed after shiftwork, in bed with physical injury / illness, in general poor health with reduced but not wheelchair using mobility issues - would you expect these people to rush to an assembly point?

If the building is businesses uses would you entertain claims for business disruption by forcing people to the evcuation assembly point?

Hi Mike

Leaving the relative responsibilities of landlord and tenants to one side, what is the point in having Evac Chairs unless you have an understanding that they will do the business in an emergency?

I can't see how you could know the answer to that without testing their effectiveness during drills however "unannounced" these might be.

When I first started in my last job Evac Chairs were a new addition to the market and I was persuaded that they had merit though we didn't employ anyone who needed them at the time - but could easily envisage that we should employ somebody with a mobility disability or have one or more visitors with similar issues.

So, we practised their use with people pretending to have mobility impairments, if only to help those who would deploy them and get disabled people down the stairs used to their operation.

I played the role of the disabled person on the first time this was tried out in our office. Somewhat disconcerting being pushed down stairs that had curves and turns but I think it would have been MUCH more disconcerting to both the disabled person and the person helping them down if the very first time the Evac Chair was being used was in the real emergency of an actual fire.

As we learnt from experience we adjusted some of the evacuation procedures to best enable a speedy evacuation for all.

Just like our evavuation procecures were tweaked for various other reasons, such as to best get people from different floors to their assembly points - most of which meant crossing busy City Centre roads without accident.

When somebody buys an Evac Chair part of the package includes training of those who will deploy it. That training will very soon be unlearned unless reinforced with practice e.g. at fire drills.

....and you might have a situation where you have multiple tenants on the floor (or floors) where the Evac Chair(s) is located. This might result in a scenario where a disabled person from one floor ends up being pushed down the stairs by somebody working for a different organisation. That needs planning and practice!!

Edited by user 09 October 2022 15:04:00(UTC)  | Reason: Clarification

I agree with Peter that practice at using these chairs is required, however, this doesn't necessarily have to be during a general drill, but could be done in the more relaxed conditions of a planned practice exercise devoted to testing a PEEP (or potential PEEP with, as Peter describes, someone playing the role).

I think it is particularly good for fire marshals to try out these chairs on each other, as then they not only become familiar with how to operate them, but also get an understanding of what it is like to be moved in such s chair.

I have also played this role and I also found it disconcerting.

There is absolutely no requirement for fire drills to be unannounced, and there is no reason why you can't inform interested parties should you choose to do so.

There are many reasons why it may be better to have unannounced fire drills - I personally advocate that they should usually be unannounced to make them a more effective test of the arrangements.  However there will often be at some people in the know - as depending on the organisation, there may be VIP visitors of a calibre that you don't want to disrupt, or critical processes going on that would cause product to be lost if they were stopped, or people who would be particularly disturbed and distressed by a drill because of a previous traumatic experience of a real emergency.  You can certainly make a similar argument for this scenario.

The ideal of course is for the training already to have been done and people to be already confident in both operating and riding in the chairs.  Until this ideal is the reality, there is a good case for informing those who would be involved in PEEPs (or in your case, informing the relevant tenant contacts and letting them make the decision for their area), if only to alleviate anxiety on the day.

I used to work in Mental health hospitals. And we had evac chairs around the buildings. I used to attend and do 'unanounced fire drills'. But i always checked first to ensure that i wasn't going to endanger the staff and service users. If I foresaw a problem i would come back another time. I taught the staff to use the evac chair with the use of a dummy. (Ruth Lee, there are other manufacturers out there).

I then explained that sometimes it can be quicker to walk them down the stairs slowly and guided with two or more personnel.

Whilst drills are a must do item. Do not create any further problems. Always conduct a risk assessment for the drill. This can enforce your decison making not to conduct it in the first place. Record the drill in a drill report and you may learn a great deal if people co-operate . Dammed if you do drill, dammed if you don't drill.

By the way, I've noticed that we all (me included) have been giving opinions and arguments on this, with no links to any guidance.

I can't say that I have ever seen any published guidance on these issues of whether evacuations should or should not be known to those taking part or whether they should or should not include the use of evac chairs.

Kate - the lack of guidance reflects the desire of Government not to be seen as telling anyone what to do, which becomes even more so, when HM Government is having one of its "bonfire or regulations" initiatives (I use the word "iniative" with a degree of scepticism as previous iterations have burnt very little).

What has recently been announced as avoiding the "Nanny State".