INTRODUCTION

There is no simple way to know how long it will take a person with mobility impairments, or a highly dependent person, to evacuate or be evacuated from a building before conditions become untenable because of fire. For example, in the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, over 1000 surviving occupants had a limitation that affected their ability to evacuate, including recent surgery or injury, obesity, heart condition, asthma, advanced age and pregnancy. An investigation into the evacuation indicates that evacuation flow rates were approximately half those normally observed in fire drills.

Recent fires, such as those at the Rosepark care home (where 14 people died) and at Warrington District General Hospital (three staff were injured while evacuating patients) illustrate how society's most vulnerable people are at risk from fire.

In addition, many of the 400 or so attendees at a series of seven fire safety seminars run by BRE indicated that ‘if they had a magic wand, the fire safety problem they would like to solve' would be the need for a better understanding of evacuation of mobility-impaired people. Delegates' responses included the following:

‘Realistic evacuation times/travel distances for residential care premises.'

‘Evacuation time/staff ratio in respect of residential care premises. We include figures for staffing levels and bed complement in compartments. We will probably have to step back from this in future – I'm not aware of any research re dependency of patient/ staff and travel distances.'

‘Patient evacuation training – how far, how long, health and safety issues, legal issues, physical – should actual patients be involved?'

‘The effectiveness of signage in a fire.'

A research programme was therefore commissioned by BRE Trust to consider the means of evacuating people who are elderly or ill, or children, from buildings – residential care, healthcare and domestic premises.

This guide has been written as the outcome of that research. It aims to provide support for designers, owners and managers of buildings so that they can formulate efficient strategies for the effective evacuation of people with mobility impairments.

Qualitative guidance is given to illustrate the points to consider when developing an evacuation strategy that will be as inclusive as practicably possible.

Formulae and data are also provided in order to quantify the relationship that exists between the size and nature of a population that may need evacuating, the resources that are available to effect that evacuation and the level of fire protection afforded by the building requiring evacuation.

This guidance is supplementary to that provided by HTM 05-03: Part K as well as the Fire Safety Risk Assessment Guides, and in particular:

• Fire safety risk assessment: healthcare premises

• Fire safety risk assessment: residential care premises

• Fire safety risk assessment supplementary guide: means of escape for disabled people.

It is intended for application to buildings that have been designed and constructed according to the Building Regulations. As well as buildings designed to satisfy the recommendations of Approved Document B or HTM 05-02, it may be equally suitable for fireengineered buildings.

This guide has been prepared particularly for those responsible for buildings in which large numbers of people with mobility impairments are expected to be present. It gives an overview of the nature of existing fire strategies in healthcare premises, particularly with respect to evacuation.

It is intended to provide information for management as well as front-line staff, since it is successful communication between these two groups that will maximise the effectiveness of evacuation strategies.

The research carried out for the production of this guide involved BRE Global gathering information from evacuation drills and real evacuations. Two evacuation drills were organised with the direct involvement of BRE Global, and information (video and questionnaires) was submitted on a further six exercises and two real incidents over the course of a three-year period. The data from these evacuations and evacuation drills cannot be included in this guide for reasons of data protection.

The research presented in this guide was undertaken before the investigation into the Rosepark care home fire was published, but much of the information it contains should help to prevent future similar fire events.