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.
I used to work in a school with disabled kids, so I did a few fire drills.
As other people here have said, there are areas like stairwells where the kids with mobility issues waited (with adults, of course!) during fire alarms. Fire crews would’ve been told about us and come and got those kids first in the event of an actual emergency.
Lol imagine if the adults were like “ok good, you stay here, I’m out, bye”
Sounds like the Uvalde police force!
“I don’t wanna go inside, there’s fire in there!”
I think they didn’t even go inside because scared.
I may have pretended to do this as a joke once or twice.
That’s part of my job. Our district covers several cities, so several different fire departments. Some have suggested meeting spots on each floor. Some have provided slings. Our schools all have evac chairs. They suck and they’re dangerous. If you can have someone carry your chair,someone else block traffic, and one or both of them help you back into your chair afterwards bottom bumping down the stairs is what i would do. Otherwise, go to the meeting spot.
We had a few evac chairs, but I think you needed training to use them and I never had the training!
…i have a paraplegic friend who’s surprisingly adept at wheely-ing his own chair down fire stairs and a quadriplegic friend who we just hodor outside during fire drills, even though they’re both supposed to shelter-in-place…