QUALITY OF EMERGENCY STAIR TRAVEL DEVICES

Abstract

Emergency stair travel devices are designed to evacuate people from buildings and used duringinitial unguided spontaneous evacuations as well as by professional emergency services. Therequirements for evacuation chairs are varied: they are determined by the technical conditions ofthe building, by the specific way of operation of non-professional and professional operators, andon the other hand, they must take into account the specificity of evacuated people. The problemis to indicate the quality parameters of the evacuation chairs so that these chairs can be adaptedto the organization and equipment system. The article aims to indicate and justify such qualityparameters. The starting point was a quantitative analysis of scientific documents. It was foundthat there are only 33 scientific documents directly related to research on the evacuation of peoplewith physical disabilities. Based on the literature, the tested evacuated devices were classified intothree main types: hand-carried, tracked, and sled. Three groups of potential users of emergencystair travel devices have been identified: 1) non-professional rescuer, i.e., a person assisting inthe first spontaneous phase of evacuation; (2) professional rescuer, meaning a firefighter or otherprofessional who is physically fit and well versed in the operation of equipment and evacuationprocedures; this type of user usually appears in the second phase of the evacuation; (3) evacuee. Eachof these groups has specific needs and evaluates the quality of the device in different ways. Basedon the analysis of scientific literature, the following predictors of the quality of emergency stairtravel devices have been identified: average evacuation time(s), evacuation speed (m/s), numberof rescuers (pcs.), effort of rescuers (estimated oxygen consumption or pulse rate) and comfort ofthe person being rescued (estimated by pulse frequency or based on surveys). The expert analysispoints out that essential requirements for evacuation devices vary for different people and do notoverlap. For a person being evacuated, for example, the position of the body during evacuation isimportant, and from the point of view of rescuers, the ease of use, mobility and tolerance for errorsin use are important in case of evacuation. Both groups of rescuers have similar requirements, butthey have different priorities.