Disabled DD and fire evacuation.

Bless you. I can understand your worry.

They should definitely be getting an evac chair and should have a written and practiced plan (shared with you).

However, I do think it's right that a disabled person evacuates last. If they went first they would be slower which in a chaotic emergency could then cause pushing, shoving and people getting trampled which could harm your child and others.

A horrid situation and it would have made sense to have moved classroom allocation around so her class could have a ground floor classroom.

Just spoken to my brother who is a fire safety officer at a university - he says:

There has to be a personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP). They are being negligent if there is not one. This should have been planned with the parent and child in consultation.

A fire safety and risk assessment should have been done

They have a legal duty (Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005) to provide adequate means of emergency escape for all occupants of the building. Without a PEEP it is not certain that adequate means of emergency escape are being met for any disabled staff / students / visitors - remind them of their legal duty.

In the situation described, there should be a refuge for the student to wait in with at least one staff member. This should have communication to whoever would be managing the evacuation. The refuge must be able to provide safety from a fire for the length of time until an individual can be safely evacuated - fire restricting construction should be used . Usually a refuge will be at the head of a protected stairway as this will then allow for exit from the building.

For the evacuation itself, there should be an evac chair available and training completed for the transfer from wheelchair to evac chair. If it is only a short distance on stairs, a carry down procedure might be used but this should have already been identified and practiced.

This should all have been put in place in advance and it is worrying that it was not.

It is sadly an unfair system but I’m not sure what the alternative is.

My deaf cousin was forgotten about during a fire alarm at her college and had no idea there was an alarm going off - thankfully it was just a test.

Also you 100% need to speak to someone TODAY about how they would evacuate your child in an emergency. I wouldn't leave the building until I knew that. That's terrifying to not know. :(

Our school used to have defined year groups in different bits of the school but they changed to mixing them up when students with wheelchairs joined the school. Ever since they have had one class in each year group downstairs. It works well for students who are temporarily on crutches etc, there's always a downstairs class they can join. And teachers can message each other easily these days. Arguably there isn't the same need to be next door to your year group colleagues as there used to be.

I would have thought she would need a safe place to go upstairs, as a minimum.

I thought that people with disabilities, or pregnant or something else that may slow them down wait until the masses have left so they can they leave safely without being pushed and shoved on the way out of the building. Is that not the case?

Well.that's ridiculous its not written in stone that classrooms for younger age groups are down stairs ,why can they just move things around I would have thought it would come under reasonable adjustments ?

Agree she should have a PEEP. Protocol os normally to move to a safe area (with strong fire doors etc, often at top of stairwell) and await rescue or follow on. A designated fire warden may stay behind. There may be an evac chair in this area but can only be used by trained staff.

I'm sorry but all those people saying that's life are abysmal. Absolutely abysmal. This is someone's child. In a school. Where they should absolutely guarantee they can keep her as safe as everyone else. If this means making all her lessons on the ground floor then that should be the case. How dare they make her feel like an inconvenience or less of value than her peers at a delicate age in her life.
OP shout loudly- involve the press if they don't agree to a difference action plan. Its not about if its unlikely to happen its about making a teenage girl feel her life is valued.

I think that’s bloody awful. There must be a way of basing her downstairs?

HoppingPavlova I don't think your posts are really helpful. We all know the realities of the situation for disabled people in an emergency.

Surely the logical.thing to.do.would be to.move the classrooms around so.she isn't upstairs ?
Her life is just AA important as anyone else's .

That should not be normal. There should be evac chairs at the top of the stairs that slide down the stairs, therefore they can leave at the same time

No, as that will limit volume of others down the stairs. So for example you may get 20 people out in 90 sec or 12 plus 1 in an exact chair. Again, it’s a numbers game, you have to scenario plan for max numbers out quickly, nothing personal and has zero to do with personal worth as someone else claimed.

You do know that in hospitals not everyone will be evac’d right? I did those drills for umpteen years. There’s always a group that is going to put others at risk and they are left in situ and instruction given to firefighters as to how many and location (s). No one is allowed to stay with them. They are worth no less than anyone else, it’s just logistics. Obviously you try your best and their are a sub-set who, in certain situations may even be evac’d via helicopter from roof but that’s not possible in all scenarios and not every patient in a bed could be moved like this plus it’s also limited to scenario/time/number of choppers.

In drills at school, my child at the time, who may/may not have needed assistance depending h on how they were travelling at the time, but still would have been slower, went last. Funnily, if she had a male teacher they always generally scooped her up and carried her (very very slight) at the end of everyone else. In one situation in an actual emergency (turned out to be false alarm but they didn’t know, just knew not a drill), one female teacher did also but she was a large and strong person and no doubt the adrenaline kicked in. However, a typical size female likely would not have and I’m guessing if push came to shove, do to speak, and there were flames licking their arse, the average teacher would have no doubt left them in their wake. You sort of have to be okay with that on the realism scale.

I'd expect her to be held in an area protected with at least 30min fire doors and have an evac chair and 2 staff assigned to get her out once the stairwell is cleared or if a close fire, first to notify emergency services of her presence and whereabouts. It's impossible to use an evac chair on a busy stairwell and dangerous to allow a person with mobility issues to be caught in the unpredictable nature of an emergency evacuation using stairs. However there should be a PEEP in place to ensure her safety until she can be safely evacuated.

OP I really sympathise with you on this one, I remember the blind panic I was in when I started a new job on the sixth floor of an office and the fire alarm went off, everyone left and I was trapped. They hadn't done a PEEP. I was only stuck for a few minutes before a fire marshal came to check the floor was clear, found out I couldn't get out, and shouted down to the person trained in doing the evac-chair (who thankfully wasn't far down the stairs) and they got me out but I still have nightmares about that day because I was in a fatal fire many years earlier.

I don't think people stop to think of the psychological impact of believing you're trapped in a burning building and thinking no one is coming to help you. And knowing that next time you go upstairs in a building the same might happen. The school need to get organised on this.

It's not just about going last, that's not the issue (and it should be as immediately following everyone else as possible, not "and wait a while"), it's about the fact this school doesn't seem to have the basic equipment or trained persons they need to get the child out in an emergency.

The law:
Where an employer or a service provider does not make provision for the safe evacuation of disabled people from its premises, this may be viewed as discrimination. It may also constitute a failure to comply with the requirements of the fire safety legislation mentioned above.

Not having basic equipment and people trained in it is very likely to mean they haven't made proper provision and they need to sort this asap or the building isn't meeting basic fire safety for your daughter to be in.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-risk-assessment-means-of-escape-for-disabled-people/fire-safety-risk-assessment-means-of-escape-for-disabled-people-accessible-version

That should not be normal. There should be evac chairs at the top of the stairs that slide down the stairs, therefore they can leave at the same time

I would be challenging

Oh bless you. You never stop worrying ❤️ even when you know logically they'll be well looked after.
Good idea to ask for what they've got in writing. There should definitely be an evac chair.

That doesn't sound a great fire evacuation route. My daughter is in p1 so currently downstairs but we've been told if stairs are difficult when she moves up, they can rearrange the classes to keep her on the ground floor. I know this isn't ideal but may still be the lesser of evils.

I don’t necessarily agree. We have the same where I work now in an office tower. Anyone with disability involving speed etc goes last, otherwise you potentially have someone holding up people and it’s a numbers game unfortunately. Then there’s the next group who are able to slowly make their way out after others to ensure they are not holding up others in stairwells. Then the last group who can’t manage the stairwell at all, and given the lift can’t be used in event of fire, have to wait and hope the firies can get up to them and carry them out before they burn to death or die of smoke inhalation. Myself and one of my kids would be in both of the last two groups. That’s life, it’s nothing personal, it’s about saving the majority if that’s truly the scenario.