Equal opportunity ... for survival

Imagine being a disabled person in a wheelchair working in or visiting the 20th floor of a city office block.

Suddenly the fire alarm sounds, the lifts automatically drop to the ground floor as a safety measure and everyone files out of the building down the emergency evacuation stairwell.

Unfortunately, wheelchairs can't go downstairs, so you ask the fire warden what you should do. The warden correctly states that you will be left "in a safe area" - probably on the stair landing - until the firefighters can get to you. And there you are left, pondering the possibility of a fire growing in intensity below.

This frightening scenario is no joke. It is a situation that could well occur in many of New Zealand's multi-storey commercial buildings.

Tower blocks and other multi-storey buildings are designed for wheelchair access but, it seems, there is no legislation - or even pending legislation - specifically requiring building owners to provide wheelchair egress in the event of an emergency evacuation.

Yet, according to the United Nations-sponsored World Fire Statistic Centre, 10 per cent of the populations in Western countries have some form of disability which makes it difficult for them to evacuate a building in a real emergency.

What is difficult to understand about this state of affairs is that a simple solution exists in the form of special evacuation wheelchairs with continuously rotating v-belts that smoothly descend stairways and cost less than $2000 apiece.

So, for example, factoring the cost of evacuation wheelchairs into the design/specifications for every floor of a new 11-storey building would cost less than $20,000, or less than $40,000 for a 21-storey building.

"Currently, under fire regulations in New Zealand, in the event of an emergency in a multi-storey building, lifts are not to be used and disabled people are expected to proceeded to a 'safe area'," says Allan Armstrong, New Zealand manager for the British-made Evac+Chairs.

"Disabled people view this rule with a great deal of scepticism and think the situation is ludicrous given that equipment exists that is readily available, inexpensive and easy to use," adds Armstrong, whose company also trains designated able-bodied workers in the use of the evacuation chairs.

"Any ordinary, responsible person, male or female, can be trained to operate the chair. It's not a matter of strength - its just learning the technique to give a mobility impaired person a smooth ride down the stairs.

"The descent is easily controlled and the chairs can be stopped with very little effort because their braking system is automatically geared to the passenger's weight."

Armstrong says the Evac+Chair costs only $1990, with discounted prices for bulk orders, so it offers building owners and their tenants a cheap but efficient way of complying with health, safety and fire regulations relating to the evacuation of multi-storey buildings.

Armstrong says the Fire Safety and Evacuation of Building Regulations 2006 puts the onus on owners or tenants of multi-storey buildings for the current, unsatisfactory approach of leaving mobility impaired people behind on the steps in evacuations."The regulations state that everyone must be evacuated to a safe place or places of safety so that all building occupants can be accounted for. However, the term 'all occupants' does not include disabled persons," Armstrong says.

Vivian Naylor, barrier-free advisor and educator for CCS Disability Action, Northern Region, confirms Armstrong's statement and says "disability is low down in the pecking order" within the building industry.

"The Building Act says that 'people who use a building must be able to escape from the building if it is on fire', but this statement needs a rider," Naylor says.

"The act should say: 'people must be able to escape - but only if they can use the stairs'."

Naylor points out that this issue doesn't only affect wheelchair users.

"Apart from people with obvious mobility impairment, whether walking or wheeling, it includes people with strength and stamina issues, such as those suffering from respiratory difficulties, including asthma, heart ailments, advanced pregnancy, obesity and old age."

Peter Menzies joined the Timaru Fire Brigade in 1968 and served 30 years as a fire officer - including five years as a fire safety officer in Dunedin; three years as instructor at the Officers' Training College in Wellington with the rank of assistant commander; and was an operational executive officer for 10 years in Wellington, where he had a one-year attachment as divisional commander northern.

Now the managing director of Fire Risk Management Ltd in Wellington, Menzies confirms that fire regulations do require building owners to provide some method of evacuation for people with disabilities. But, ironically, this "method of evacuation" can include "leaving them in a safe place" instead of getting them out of the building.

"Where there is no practical egress from a building, disabled persons are usually put on the landing of emergency stairs to await firemen," Menzies says.

"The warden from that floor advises the building warden and they advise the fire service where they are. The Fire Service then does a good job in giving priority to disabled persons left in a building."

In addition to having evacuation chairs, Menzies believes that disabled people working in multi-storey buildings could be given "override lift keys" for use in the event of an emergency so they can exit a building by the lifts while able-bodied workers and visitors leave via the emergency stairwells.

Lifts and lift foyers could be protected with 30-minute fire-resistant partitions and fitted with smoke detectors so lifts would not stop on any floor where smoke had been sensed.

"It's been estimated that allowing disabled persons exclusive use of the lifts in an emergency evacuation would result in their removal to a place of safety in less than three or four minutes," Menzies says.

Menzies attended a conference at Cambridge University in 2006 where the example of disabled persons caught up in the World Trade Centre terrorist attack was cited.

John Abruzzo is a C5-6 graded quadriplegic who relied on an electric wheelchair for mobility. On September 11, 2001, Abruzzo was working on the 69th floor as an associate accountant for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

When the first plane hit the tower, Abruzzo was evacuated with the help of his three or four co-workers who took turns negotiating an Evac+Chair down the 69 floors for 90 minutes - even though they hadn't been trained to use the chair.

As they descended, they passed firemen gasping for breath, who had struggled to reach the 30th floor loaded with equipment, along with disabled colleagues waiting as instructed on stair landings.

Abruzzo and fellow employee, Tina Hansen, escaped in Evac+Chairs the Port Authority had purchased after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured over 1000 others.

Sadly, other disabled workers, who "did the recommended thing" and waited on stair landings to be rescued, perished when the towers collapsed.

Armstrong has demonstrated the practicality of the Evac+Chair to Sky City managers, taking an adult volunteer male worker all the way from the Observation deck down 47 flights of stairs, comprising 1029 steps, to the ground floor.

"I am an unfit, fat, 66-year-old pensioner, but I still believe I am the only person to ever bring someone all the way down the Sky Tower fire stairs," Armstrong says.

Armstrong says owners and tenants of multi-storey buildings in Wellington have been "quite responsive" to the need for the evacuation chairs, "but in Auckland - not so great".

"ACC in Wellington has purchased one for every disabled person working there and several have been purchased by the Department of Labour, Internal Affairs, IRD, Ministry of Health and up here, by Auckland and Manukau city councils. But none have purchased sufficient to evacuate every disabled person from every floor in their buildings."

Jan Scown, director, Office for Disability Issues within the Ministry of Social Development, says her office encourages government departments to consider the needs of all staff when developing emergency plans.

"As a result, over the last couple of years the ministry has introduced evacuation chairs, and provided training to staff on their use, to ensure that disabled people can be evacuated quickly and safely," Scown says.

However, Tony Howe of the Auckland Disability Resource Centre believes all government offices should set the example by providing sufficient evacuation chairs within their buildings to enable the safe evacuation of all disabled workers and visitors.

"Of course, government departments hold the public purse and supposedly they consider the best interests of all when administering their duties. However, if they don't take the lead, there will be very little 'buy in' from the public."

Howe says organisations for the disabled in New Zealand hope that it will not take a "towering inferno" scenario in New Zealand, and the needless deaths of disabled persons, to spark legislation requiring that evacuation chairs or other efficient forms of egress become standard and compulsory within all multi-storey buildings.

"We live in a society where statistics state that one in five people have a disability, so the odds of being 'left to your own devices' is high for mobility impaired people," Howe says.

"In large multi-storeyed buildings the potential for mass deaths and injuries is also high - but seemingly that is the only thing that will prompt needed legislation. If disaster strikes and many people die from the lack of provision for safe egress, then action will surely happen - but it will be too late for those involved and their family or whanau."

www.evacchair.co.nz