Protecting students and staff in the event of evacuation
How well prepared are you and your institution in the event of an emergency that requires you to evacuate a building or an entire campus. Brian Page considers the services and equipment available to product your staff and student's lives.
Are you responsible for the safety of the students, staff and visitors to your university campus? If you needed to evacuate your buildings in an emergency how confident are you that you would be able to get every single person out quickly and safely?
Human behaviour in emergency situations differs and studies have shown that about two thirds of the time available to escape is taken up by a person's initial reaction. Often there is a delay while people decide if the alarm is real and only act after seeing the reaction of others around them to the developing situation. It is therefore crucial that an effective emergency plan is put in place for those who may need extra help to escape.
Following changes in legislation such as the Equality Act 2010 and the Fire Safety Regulatory Reform Order 2005, venues which are open to the public, no matter how big or small, are legally obliged to ensure that all members of the public, particularly those with disabilities or mobility issues, have equal access to facilities and can safely escape a property in the event of incident.
University property managers also have to take responsibility for the evacuation of everyone on their site, whether they are employees, students, visitors or members of the public and whether it is just one individual who has suffered an injury or a crowd of thousands.
Jon Ellis, managing director at Ferno, which is recognised as the global leader in the manufacture and distribution of emergency patient-handling and evacuation solutions, says: "The key to making sure everyone is evacuated safely in an emergency situation is to be prepared and know exactly what needs to be done and who needs do it. It is essential that every member of staff knows how to act, where to direct people, and what equipment is available to get everyone off the premises safely."
Ferno provides a range of consultancy services to ensure that property owners meet all statutory safety standards and provides a range of training services and evacuation audits to a wide range of customers including universities, colleges, football, clubs, arenas, property owners and facility managers.
Several universities across the UK have used Ferno to assess their risks and evacuation plan in the case of an emergency. Clients in the education sector include the universities of the West of Scotland; Strathclyde; York; Edge Hill; Imperial College London and Trinity College Dublin.
Ferno's Evacuation Audit is a new form of risk assessment which considers all aspects of an emergency evacuation including the management of disabled people, treating the injured, the effects of smoke, lighting and crowd control.
Mr Ellis says: "Our Evacuation Audit is suitable for all public buildings and venues where members of the public congregate such as colleges and universities. In truth any building will benefit from an evacuation audit. Even those who think they have all the correct procedures in place may be surprised by what else they can do to aid a safe and speedy evacuation should an emergency situation arise.
The University of Strathclyde recently teamed up Ferno, to ensure their students, staff and visitors are safe in the event of an emergency.
The university, based in Glasgow, took delivery of 100 evacuation chairs from Ferno which have been manufactured to suit any stairwell and allow people who maybe injured or have mobility problems to be moved downstairs safely and easily, without requiring any heavy lifting and reduces potential manual handling risks, should any of the university's sites need to be evacuated.
All chairs can be folded and wall mounted for easy storage and can be quickly deployed in an emergency.
Ferno has supplied similar equipment to Google's headquarters in Dublin and Trinity College in the city, as well as sports stadiums around the UK including Manchester United, Arsenal and England's National stadium Wembley Arena.
Trinity College Dublin currently deploys a number of Ferno Saver Safe Evacuation Chairs across its estate as an effective solution for helping the disabled or incapacitated down flights of stairs during emergency situations or evacuations without requiring any heavy lifting. The Saver Evacuation Chair includes many systems to enhance patient comfort and safety, yet remains lightweight and compact to ensure easy storage and use. The ease of patient transfers on and off the chair means that users remain safe at all times.
Mr Ellis said: "We offer a wide choice of equipment which is ideal for use by universities where there can be a large number of people on the premises at any one time. We advise schools, colleges and universities on their preparations for evacuation scenarios and offer some insight on the equipment which would be most appropriate to their estate portfolio. Planning for the worst can make all the difference should an emergency situation arise."
Ferno's evacuation equipment includes several different evacuation chairs which can be manufactured to suit any stairwell in any building a standard. The range begins with the Saver Safe Evacuation chair - a single user operation emergency evacuation chair – which ensures property owners meet the statutory obligations; the Compact 4 Track which glides up and down stairs and reduces any strain on the user; and the state-of-the-art EZ Glide® Evacuation Stair Chair which glides patient loads up to 227kg down stairs.
All chairs can be folded and wall mounted for easy storage and quickly deployed in an emergency. Ferno's evacuation equipment also includes basic trauma equipment for anyone who is injured and can't be taken by chair ranging from carry sheets and stretchers to burns treatment and emergency foil blankets.
As well as evacuation chairs Ferno provides a wide range of safety and rescue equipment including rescue and basket stretchers, transfer trolleys and immobilisations kits. And to make sure that customers can get the best out of their equipment, Ferno delivers a seamless training service to ensure the designated evacuation team can operate all its equipment safely and to their full potential.
Mr Ellis says: "The training service ensures that anyone using Ferno's products will have the right skills set to use them safely and efficiently. Training is also available to any organisations, which under law are obliged to have a range of rescue and evacuation products on their premises.
"We recently carried out a training session for the National Gallery of Scotland – similar to many we conduct with further education clients - when it took delivery of a Ferno EZ Glide. This is the first chair of its kind in the industry. It has multiple uses as a stair chair, evacuation chair or transport chair and is suitable for many different environments.
"Our work with the National Gallery is a perfect example of what we can offer to our customers in terms of service delivery – not only a great product but also high quality support training to ensure they get the very best out of their investment. A particular area of expertise is our ability to 'customise' and 'tailor' courses and programmes to suit a wide range of customer and clients' needs, which is what we did with the National Gallery."
"The EZ Glide chair will be extremely useful" said Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery. "The practicality and ease of use of the chair will help the Gallery aid disabled visitors as well as ensuring the safety of all visitors in the event of an accident or emergency.
"We found the training programme to be invaluable. It gave us the opportunity to learn about the full potential of the chair and all its uses, meaning that we are likely to use it far more than we would have done."
Ferno's Evacuation Audit is suitable for all venues including sports stadiums, music venues, theatres and cinemas as well as hotels, schools, universities and workplaces, large and small. As Ferno work closely with the emergency services all staff are experts in all aspects of emergency evacuation planning.
For further information about the Ferno range of services visit the website at www.ferno.co.uk