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.
…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
originallypreviously 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)
Palimpsested
Holy word of the day, Batman!
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 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)
In my workplace, there are a few options: When a disabled person is on a certain floor above ground floor, there will be a special chair they can be put in, that allows one person to maneuver them down the fire escape. Multiple people in the company are trained on the use of this contraption and are notified before the evacuation is necessary.
When there are more wheelchair bound people in the building than there are evacuation chairs available, they’ll have to be taken to the fire escape behind double fireproof doors, where the area is pressurized with clean air. There the firemen will evacuate them.
A third option is the area where the elevators are. It closes automatically and has a fireproof door where you can wait in front of the elevators for the firemen to evacuate you using the elevators (or otherwise).
Normally there aren’t that many wheelchair bound people in the building that need those chairs, because visitors are normally confined to the ground floor. On a floor where a disabled person used to work (now retired), one of those chairs was permanently available.
Edit: the ones we have resemble these https://evac-chair.com/
These things are absolutely terrifying btw. There’s much better options out there. I never realized until I had the chance to ride one during a practice, I replaced every single one of them for our company after that for evacuation mattresses.
We have a different brand, but otherwise comparable. During our training and practice, we did a few runs with volunteers and also with the colleague who was wheelchair bound. While it does feel a bit weird the first time, it doesn’t feel unsafe to sit in, and also when operating it, you feel like in control without too much effort.
During our evacuations, everybody remains calm, and everything remains orderly and coordinated. I have to admit we never had an evacuation with fire and smoke near the people, but with the early warnings we get, that’s unlikely to happen. The building was designed with good compartmentalisation, so even when there’s a fire, the smoke shouldn’t spread too far.
One thing I haven’t seen in the thread yet, is that there ARE elevators which are intended for use during fire-related evacuations. I’ve been in buildings where signs by the elevators make it known that during evacuations you are SUPPOSED to use them.
I don’t know the specifics, but I would assume these have self-monitoring sensors to allow the elevator control system to determine whether it is affected by whatever is going on.
I suspect the way they work also changes, instead of prioritizing getting around different floors, the computer would start shuttling them up and down specifically to get people from each floor down to ground level. No-one already in the elevator gets to pick what floor they’re going to.
Modern buildings are constructed in a way that significantly slows the spread of a fire, and I would assume that the machinery and shaft of evacuation elevators, doubly so.
And same as any elevator, they are built using a level of redundancy that means several cables can fail without issue, as well as emergency brakes that arrest the fall of the cabin should the worst occur.
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.
My university had those bags. I found them… Optimistic
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.
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.
Which especially sucks as 250 for anyone over 6’ is barely above average. At my peak, I was 320
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.
That’s not a terrible emergency plan honestly
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.
Maybe in a better society the CEO wouldn’t be a shiny rarity who can only exist in the topmost floor, as far away from lower employees as possible.
I know the discussion goes much deeper than that, but, y’know.
It’s 2024, why in the hell is nobody designing skyscrapers with fun slides spiraling all the way to the bottom?
…exit slides were common fire escapes in the 1950s and you can still find abandoned hatches in some older buildings, but in my experiences renovating aged facilities they’ve all been sealed-off (and signs removed) during life-safety modernisations over the past seventy years…
…they’re pretty dangerous by modern standards so alternatives are always preferred, similar to old abandoned exterior fire escapes…
this seems really dangerous for anyone who might get stranded.
I’d take a step back and say no, this isn’t actually as bad as some of the comments seem to suggest.
The vast, vast majority of building emergencies are safe to shelter in place. Modern building codes generally prevent fires from spreading too far, and isolate smoke to a specific place in the building.
Then, for certain types of catastrophic disasters, being able bodied doesn’t actually help, as people can still get stuck and need rescue from firefighters anyway.
You need some kind of disaster Goldilocks zone where things are bad enough to where quick evacuation is helpful and things aren’t so bad that evacuation isn’t feasible, before it starts making a difference.
And in those situations, many buildings do have evacuation chairs in the stairwells. And stronger people can assist carrying down the stairs, too. There are a lot of variations on two-person or single person carries that depend on exactly what mobility limitation there is. If you live or work with or around people with mobility issues, it’s worth looking them up, maybe taking a first aid/survival class or something.
At my office each stairwell has a riding chair at the top. It’s only three stories though.
I saw one place that had a dedicated device in the stairway that was meant to help carry wheelchair bound people down the stairs.
Something like this IIRC https://siamagazin.com/the-mobile-stairlift-a-portable-stair-climbing-wheelchair/
…we used unpowered dollies of similar design for moving large appliances back when i was a groundskeeper…
