| Abstract | In the past decade, there has been a great deal of interest in North America in providing equal accessibility to buildings to all people. For example, a large number of residential, office, institutional and mercantile buildings are now accessible, or being retrofitted for accessibility, to people with different degrees of disability. While accessibility is being promoted, the question of "equal egressibility" is now becoming a subject of concern. Egressibility means that, in case of an emergency, the occupants have the ability to leave a building or to reach an area of safety. It does not mean that every occupant should egress in the same manner or through the same route; rather, it intends to provide an equal level of life safety for everyone.
At the National Fire Laboratory of the Institute for Research in Construction, numerous requests have been received regarding how to plan fire safety procedures for a building when some of the occupants have disabilities. This paper reviews the different strategies presented in the literature and discusses various approaches being considered in Canada. One of the suggested options is the use of refuge areas in a building. This option implies that occupants with disabilities do not have to evacuate during a fire; rather they move to an area of refuge where they can be rescued later. Another option being considered is the provision of "safe elevators" in highrise buildings. Most of the technical problems required to ensure that such elevators can be operated safely in a fire emergency have been addressed, however, there are still some outstanding human factors issues. A third option is to develop specific evacuation procedures for people with disabilities. The "buddy" system, for example, identifies one or a few persons who have the responsibility of looking after or reporting the presence of a person with limitations in case of an emergency. Another system is to have an available list, for the responding firefighters, of the people who may have problems evacuating. These special evacuation strategies assume that the people with disabilities will be carried out by hand or by using special devices.
In assessing the effectiveness of these various life safety strategies for occupants with disabilities, the general opinion is that there is no single life safety option that will solve all the problems. Most likely, a combination of different options will be used to ensure an acceptable level of life safety for all occupants in a building. The physical layout of a building, the type of occupancy and the characteristics of the occupants are important parameters that should be considered when determining how to provide life safety. There are also cultural factors that should be taken into account, since a solution suitable for one group may not be suitable for another from a different cultural background. |
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