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Contents
  1. 1Who is affected
  2. 2Movement on the escape route
  3. 3Recognising the alarm and responding
  4. 4Strategies and measures
  5. 5Care buildings
  6. 6Experience from the World Trade Center
  7. 7Use in fire safety engineering
  8. 8See also
  9. 9Notes
  10. 10References

The evacuation of people with disabilities covers the measures and design assumptions that allow people with a physical, sensory or cognitive limitation to leave a building, or reach a place of safety, during a fire. In fire safety engineering it means that these occupants are included in the escape design, with their own walking speeds, response times and need for help.[1][2] Proulx describes the aim as "egressibility": everyone should be able to leave a building or reach an area of safety, though not necessarily by the same route or in the same way.[3]

People with disabilities are a sizeable part of the population, and many limitations are temporary, such as a recent injury or pregnancy.[4] Measured horizontal walking speeds of people with a mobility impairment range from about 0.57 m/s with a walking frame to 0.95 m/s without a walking aid, compared with 1.25 m/s for people without a disability. On stairs the difference is larger still.[3][5] No single measure solves the problem. Refuge areas, lifts, evacuation devices, visual alarms, trained helpers and staff-assisted evacuation in care buildings are used in combination.[3] The evacuation of the World Trade Center towers in 2001 showed both the value and the limits of these measures.[4]

Who is affected

Over the last decades, building regulations in developed countries have increasingly required new and refurbished public buildings to be accessible to everyone. Because most people with disabilities and many older people want to stay independent and go out, buildings are more and more used by occupants of mixed ability. Proulx notes that fire safety design has to take this into account.[1] In the 1991 Canadian census, 15.5 % of the population reported some level of disability. The most common limitations were in mobility (53 % of disabled adults), agility (50 %), intellect (32 %) and hearing (24 %).[1]

A survey in the United States in 1994 estimated that 20.6 % of the population had some level of disability. Among people over 6 years old, 3.3 % used a wheelchair and 9.6 % used a cane, crutches or a walker for six months or longer.[3] In Northern Ireland, disabled people made up 12 % of the mobile population out and about in the community. Of those who go out, 55 % do so every day, so disabled people regularly visit public buildings.[3] Practice evacuations of high-rise offices in Canada suggested that about 3 % of occupants cannot use the stairs, because of conditions such as heart problems or recovery from surgery or accidents.[6]

In Australia, the 2020 data sheets for the Fire Safety Verification Method group disabilities into mobility, vision, hearing, cognition and memory, and speech. Based on a national survey from 2016, 4.1 % of the population are wheelchair users and 0.9 % have a severe vision limitation. A further 1.6 % have a severe hearing limitation and another 1.6 % a severe cognitive limitation. People with heart or lung disease can use the escape routes but may need rest breaks over long distances.[7] Ageing reduces the abilities of many people, conditions such as obesity or arthritis reduce stamina or cause pain, and temporary conditions also affect people's usual abilities.[7]

Movement on the escape route

The most detailed data on the movement of disabled people come from the Fire SERT research group in Northern Ireland, which studied 155 participants. On a horizontal route the mean speed of all disabled participants who walked without help was 1.00 m/s. People with a locomotion disability walked at 0.95 m/s without an aid, 0.94 m/s with crutches and 0.81 m/s with a walking stick. With a walking frame or rollator the mean speed was 0.57 m/s.[3] Electric wheelchair users moved at 0.89 m/s and manual wheelchair users at 0.69 m/s, against 1.25 m/s for participants without a locomotion disability.[3] The book Introduction to Fire Safety Engineering gives the same values in its table of walking speeds for target groups, with 0.58 m/s for a walking frame.[8]

Bar chart of mean horizontal walking speeds: from 0.57 m/s with a walking frame to 1.25 m/s for people without a locomotion disability.
Mean speed on a horizontal route for disabled people moving without help, by mobility aid, compared with people without a locomotion disability. Based on Proulx (2002), p. 3-360.

The spread within each group is large. The range for all disabled participants ran from 0.10 to 1.77 m/s.[3] In the same study, 16 of 28 manual wheelchair users needed help to complete a 50 m corridor with one 90-degree turn.[9] The researchers therefore suggested that users of different mobility aids should be treated separately in evacuation models. For some people, rest periods and the time needed to turn corners should also be included.[10]

Stairs are the main obstacle. Only 30 participants with a locomotion disability passed the screening test for the stair study. Their mean speed was 0.38 m/s going up and 0.33 m/s going down, compared with 0.70 m/s in both directions for people without a disability.[5] Participants had to rest repeatedly, and more than 35 % went up one step at a time; 44 % came down that way. Nearly all used the handrail, 91 % going up and 94 % going down, and they were more confident going up than coming down.[5]

Grouped bar chart of stair speeds: 0.38 m/s up and 0.33 m/s down with a locomotion disability, 0.70 m/s both ways without.
Mean speed on stairs going up and going down, for people with and without a locomotion disability. Based on Proulx (2002), p. 3-361.

Doors are a further barrier. In tests with a standard single door 750 mm wide, manual wheelchair users took three to four times longer than ambulant disabled people to pass through.[11] When the door had to be pulled open against a closing force of 60 or 70 N, five of the seven wheelchair users failed to get through.[12] In the Netherlands, door experiments at TU Delft in 2009 found the lowest flow when 5 % of the group could not walk unaided: 10 % below 135 persons per minute.[8]

A simple comparison shows what these speeds mean, using the values from the Fire SERT study.[3] A corridor of 30 m takes 24 s at 1.25 m/s, 44 s in a manual wheelchair at 0.69 m/s and 53 s with a walking frame at 0.57 m/s. Going down the stairs, the mean speed of 0.33 m/s for people with a locomotion disability is less than half the 0.70 m/s of people without one.[5] In a tall building these differences add up over many floors, and slower people can also hold up those behind them.[13]

Recognising the alarm and responding

A disability can also delay the earlier phases of escape. The Australian data sheets define design occupant profiles that show where adjustments are needed. People with a hearing limitation risk missing an alarm or spoken instructions, which visual or physical alarms can improve. People with a vision limitation do not see visual cues and find their way more slowly.[14] People with a cognitive or memory limitation may not recognise or respond to an alarm at all and may need help to leave.[14] For mobility, the response may be delayed in some occupancies such as homes, travel is slower and needs more space, and the evacuation plan must cover vertical travel.[2]

Proulx reports that people with an intellectual disability can learn to evacuate a building, but only with substantial, repeated training. Their walking speed may be similar to that of other occupants, although the delay before they start can be very long, especially at night.[5][15] For people with a vision limitation, the Fire SERT studies found that LED exit signs were the easiest to see and read.[5]

Strategies and measures

Proulx lists several options and notes that each has advantages and disadvantages.[3] A refuge area is a protected space where people wait for help. It had limited success in tests but remains of interest when combined with other measures. Lifts that are safe to use in a fire are another option.[3]

Section of a multi-storey building with a refuge area by the stair, a protected evacuation lift, helpers carrying an evacuation chair and a flashing alarm.
Measures that can be combined to help people with disabilities escape: a refuge area, a protected lift, an evacuation chair on the stairs and visual alarms. Based on Proulx (2002), p. 3-360.

A buddy system assigns one or more people to help or report a person with a limitation, although in practice it has not always worked. Evacuation devices for carrying people need little effort but must be kept nearby, and users need some training. Lists of people who may need help are often incomplete and out of date.[3]

Proulx concludes that no single option solves all problems, and that a combination of measures, tailored to the occupancy, is more likely to work.[3] He also stresses that many people with a mobility impairment are still mobile to some degree. Some of them will try to evacuate whatever evacuation strategy is in place, so their movement capacity must be known.[3] The International Fire Engineering Guidelines (2005) likewise state that people with disabilities can form a significant part of the occupants. They name refuges and the use of lifts as areas of growing interest and research.[16]

Lifts play a growing role. US building codes, including the New York City code, require accessible lifts as part of the means of escape, to be used by the fire service to evacuate people with disabilities. These lifts need emergency power, access from a refuge area or horizontal exit unless the building is fully sprinklered, and a smoke-protected shaft.[17] In Australia, Performance Requirement DP7 of the National Construction Code covers lifts intended to help occupants evacuate. Their type, number, location and fire isolation must suit the travel distance, the number and mobility of occupants, the waiting and travel time, the reliability of the lift and the emergency procedures.[18] Such an evacuation lift is one of the enhancements the Australian handbook suggests for very tall buildings, together with protect-in-place or partial evacuation strategies.[19]

Care buildings

In hospitals and care homes, most residents may need help to leave. The Australian data sheets note that in hospitals, residential care and aged care the share of occupants with disabilities may approach 100 %, and staff assistance may be needed for most of them.[14] Bryan notes that in such buildings fire problems have been reduced by building design, staff training and preparation to protect occupants until evacuation is possible. Studies of health care staff found that nurses carried out their roles even at high personal risk.[6]

The usual response is progressive horizontal evacuation. Nursing staff first move patients horizontally to an adjacent smoke zone or fire compartment, and move them further only if the fire continues to develop.[16] In New Zealand, C/VM2 (second edition, 2025) gives fixed times for this. In hospitals and rest homes, staff take 60 s to respond to the alarm and then 120 s per patient for each team of two staff. For early childhood centres it allows 60 s per child for each staff member.[20] Three teams of two staff are considered a realistic maximum for shuttling patients to a place of safety.[20]

Ward plan split into two fire compartments; pairs of staff move patients in beds through a fire door; a timeline shows 60 s response and 120 s per patient.
Horizontal evacuation in a hospital: pairs of staff move patients to the adjacent compartment, with 60 s to respond and 120 s per patient per team in C/VM2. Based on Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2025b), p. 30.

The commentary to the first edition explains that the two minutes per patient assume an adjacent enclosure for horizontal evacuation. Trial evacuations of intensive care units, in which patients were strapped to stretchers and carried down stairs, needed three to eight minutes just to prepare each patient.[21] C/VM2 also excludes some simplified analyses for these groups. Its check of radiant heat on people passing a fire along an escape route is not appropriate where occupants are likely to have impaired mobility.[22]

Experience from the World Trade Center

After the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, a study of 27 occupants with disabilities found an average evacuation time of 3.34 hours, ranging from 40 minutes to more than 9 hours. Most went down the stairs with help from other evacuees or emergency personnel.[6] A review committee in 1995 called the evacuation of disabled people slow and arduous. Evacuation chairs and a buddy system for known mobility-impaired occupants were then introduced.[13][23]

On 11 September 2001, about 6 % of the surviving occupants of the two towers, roughly 1,000 people, reported a limitation that affected their evacuation. Recent injuries and chronic illnesses were the most common; very few people used a wheelchair.[24][4] Many evacuated with help from colleagues or strangers. In one case four people carried a wheelchair user down from a floor in the 60s in an evacuation chair.[25] Of the survivors, 51 % in WTC 1 and 33 % in WTC 2 named injured and disabled people in the stairs as an obstacle. Two helpers supporting one person could fill the whole width of a stair.[13]

In WTC 1 some mobility-impaired occupants were taken off the stairs to a holding floor low in the building, so that others could pass.[4] Firefighters found 40 to 60 people on the 12th floor and were helping about 20 of them down just before the collapse; it is unknown how many survived.[26] Mobility-impaired people did not appear to be over-represented among those who died below the impact floors. However, they were not consistently covered by the evacuation procedures, because some were left by colleagues and others had not told anyone of their limitation.[4] In WTC 2, 19 % of the mobility-impaired survivors used lifts, close to the 16 % of all survivors.[27]

NIST concluded that, as far as possible, mobility-impaired occupants should have a means to evacuate on their own. It observed that current strategies generally required them to shelter in place and wait for help. New procedures should consider full building evacuation and could include fire-protected and structurally hardened lifts and motorised evacuation devices.[28]

Use in fire safety engineering

In a performance-based design, people with disabilities enter the analysis through occupant profiles and through the evacuation strategy. The Australian handbook divides occupants into three groups: prompt evacuation without assistance, slow evacuation without assistance and assisted evacuation.[29] For the last group the pre-movement time is taken as infinite unless help arrives. These occupants rely on the fire brigade's search and rescue if they cannot leave.[29][30] The handbook also requires the fire safety strategy to document the evacuation strategy for all occupants, including people with disabilities.[31]

The default Australian profiles assume 4 % of occupants with a mobility limitation, 1 % with a vision limitation and 1.5 % each with a hearing or cognitive limitation. These shares follow the general population and must be adjusted for buildings such as hospitals.[2][14] Evacuation software increasingly includes lifts, groups in wheelchairs or hospital beds, and staff who guide people out.[32] NIST recommended that egress models and design methods take account of human factors such as occupant size and mobility status.[33]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Proulx (2002), p. 3-359.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Australian Building Codes Board (2020a), Data Sheet D1, p. 260.
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 Proulx (2002), p. 3-360.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Averill et al. (2005), p. 169.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Proulx (2002), p. 3-361.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Bryan (2002), p. 3-335.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Australian Building Codes Board (2020a), Data Sheet D1, p. 259.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Van Rossum (2027), §7.4.
  9. ↑ Bryan (2002), p. 3-336.
  10. ↑ Bryan (2002), p. 3-337.
  11. ↑ Bryan (2002), p. 3-338.
  12. ↑ Bryan (2002), p. 3-339.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Averill et al. (2005), p. 159.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Australian Building Codes Board (2020a), Data Sheet D1, p. 261.
  15. ↑ Proulx (2002), p. 3-362.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 National Research Council of Canada et al. (2005), p. 2.8-2.
  17. ↑ Averill et al. (2005), p. 35.
  18. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 106.
  19. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 49.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2025b), p. 30.
  21. ↑ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2013), p. 97.
  22. ↑ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2025b), p. 35.
  23. ↑ Averill et al. (2005), p. 42.
  24. ↑ Averill et al. (2005), p. 168.
  25. ↑ Averill et al. (2005), p. 148.
  26. ↑ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), pp. 159–160.
  27. ↑ Averill et al. (2005), p. 152.
  28. ↑ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), p. 216.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 62.
  30. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 123.
  31. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 28.
  32. ↑ Van Rossum (2027), §8.3.
  33. ↑ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), p. 215.

References

  • Australian Building Codes Board. (2020a). Data sheets: Fire Safety Verification Method (Handbook annex, Print version 1.1).
  • Australian Building Codes Board. (2020b). Handbook: Fire Safety Verification Method (Print version 1.1).
  • Averill, J. D., Mileti, D. S., Peacock, R. D., Kuligowski, E. D., Groner, N., Proulx, G., Reneke, P. A., & Nelson, H. E. (2005). Occupant behavior, egress, and emergency communications (NIST NCSTAR 1-7). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
  • Bryan, J. L. (2002). Behavioral response to fire and smoke. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 3-315–3-341). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2013). Commentary for Building Code clauses C1–C6 and Verification Method C/VM2.
  • Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2025b). Verification Method C/VM2: Framework for fire safety design (2nd ed.).
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2005). Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers (NIST NCSTAR 1).
  • National Research Council of Canada, International Code Council, Department of Building and Housing, & Australian Building Codes Board. (2005). International fire engineering guidelines (2005 ed.). Australian Building Codes Board.
  • Proulx, G. (2002). Movement of people: The evacuation timing. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 3-342–3-366). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Van Rossum, E. (2027). Introduction to Fire Safety Engineering. Fire Safety Academy.
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