Mags,
I work in a complex of about 6 buildings and I'm in one of the "towers"
(26 floors). We use the same type of evac chair as Kat described,
though I don't know who the "certification" body might be for something
like this--NIOSH, perhaps?
One issue that we have is that we never know how many pwd we are going
to have to evacuate in a given emergency. Being that it's a courthouse
facility we have to worry about capacity for staff as well as all of the
folks who have courthouse business to attend to. Trying to determine
the number of chairs needed is difficult. We don't want anyone to be in
the position of having to wait for a chair while the able-bodied evac
the building, yet our funding streams are not large enough to account
for what we would consider "worst case".
I do remember that you are on the mayor's commission. On this I would
strongly encourage you to check into is the city/county Emergency
Operations Plan (EOP). This is a document that every county and parish
in the US must have. It lays out the basic guidelines for how each
agency within local governments will respond to disasters. The plan
itself gives a broad overview and there are individual "annexes" for
specific issues such as evacuation and mass care of pwd. If your city's
EOP doesn't have an annex for pwd, then I would suggest that the
commission contact the county Emergency Management Agency (EMA) to
address the issue.
Surprisingly enough, there has been a good bit of banter in the
Emergency Management community about dealing with the potential issues
faced by folks with disabilities. There have been entire conferences
devoted to working with the disabled population and their caregivers.
We learned coming out of situations like Katrina that a "cookie cutter"
approach doesn't work for evacuation and shelter.
Kyle
-----Original Message-----
From: Cerebral Palsy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of kat
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 7:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Evac Chair (was: re: history an affront to science?)
Mag,
When I worked for our divisional headquarters, my department was on the
3rd floor and they got me out in an evacuation chair during fire
drills. It basically was a sling chair in a metal frame that had
runners instead of legs or wheels and long handles in the back so the
person pushing you could easily push you in the chair as it went down
the stairs. It worked but I hated the drills they had right after
lunch!
I now work at the corporate headquarters and my office is on the 1st
floor - no need for evacuation chairs at the moment.
Kat
Tamar Raine wrote:
> wow kyle!
> say, have you found anything (like a special evacuation chair)
> to get people who are in wheelchairs down the stairs in case of
emergency? I don't know if you know it, but for the past five or six
years, I've sat on the mayor's commission on pwd - my two terms are
nearly up, and unless they ask me to stay on as vice chair, I am out of
there. One of our concerns is getting pwd out of burning buildings, and
earthquakes. We've had one person with a small business show us one evac
chair. pretty good, but they're not "certified" so the ada coordinator
doesn't want to reccomend them to council.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> http://www.zazzle.com/TamarMag*
> Tamar Mag Raine
> [log in to unmask]
> www.cafepress.com/tamarmag
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
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