Portland State University student and wheelchair user Heather Brooks was left stranded at the top of a flight of stairs last month when a fire alarm sounded.
Elevators shut down, leaving stairs as the only exit. Students and professors didn’t know how to get Brooks out of the building, and they eventually carried her, according to an article in Portland State’s Daily Vanguard.
The event raises questions on proper wheelchair user procedures during a fire. University of Oregon officials said that campus and city emergency agencies know how to respond to similar situations and said proper policies are in place.
Most campus elevators will open to the lowest floor possible without smoke. Wheelchair users are advised to retreat to a stairwell because such areas are typically protected from fires. A Department of Public Safety vehicle is equipped with a device that helps wheelchair users down stairs, and Eugene firefighters will often carry anyone who can’t walk down stairs.
Disability Services Director Steve Pickett, who uses a wheelchair, said he feels confident in emergency rescuers if he were ever in a fire.
“There would be some concern, obviously, but I feel like plans are in place for an individual to have a safe evacuation,” he said. “I have full trust in (the Department of) Public Safety, but there’s always that little worry in the back of your mind.”
Pickett said roughly 25 students and six faculty members use wheelchairs on campus. He added that campus is about 80 percent accessible and that the Office of the Registrar helps to re-schedule a different classroom when needed.
Mark Maguire, with University Environmental Health and Safety, said students should stick to what they learned in elementary school: Leave the building and never use the elevator.
“If you’re in the elevator and it doesn’t have a system called elevator recall, it could potentially open to the fire,” he said.
He explained that elevator recall prevents an elevator from opening to a floor with smoke, and the elevator instead descends to the lowest floor possible in which smoke isn’t detected. Newer buildings on campus are equipped with elevator recall and current code requires elevators to have recall.
Maguire said students using wheelchairs should stay in stairwells because they provide protection from fire.
“They are basically told to wait in a safe area, and those safe areas are supposed to be designated on building evacuation maps,” Picket said. “Then, once they get to a safe area, they are to wait there until they can be assisted by Public Safety or the police or fire department.”
Stairwells in newer buildings like the Living Learning Center have fire doors that provide a refuge area that will protect it from a fire for a couple of hours, Maguire said.
Such stairwells helped people escape the fires in the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
“Where the doors were closed, people were able to go to the bottom floors,” Maguire said. “The few people that got out, that’s how they got out.”
DPS and the Eugene Fire Department will rescue anyone in a stairwell, Maguire said.
DPS Cpl. Mike Eppli said a device called Evacu-Trac helps DPS assist wheelchair users in a fire. He is trained annually to use the sled-on-tracks device. The two that are on campus are kept in the back of a DPS vehicle and in Lawrence Hall.
Maguire said a more typical response would be for an EFD firefighter to carry anyone who needs help. He added that students leaving the building should communicate with responding agencies.
“We try to educate people in the campus community,” he said. “When you evacuate a building, you tell the responding agency that there’s somebody in the stairwell in an area of refuge, so they know there’s someone there and they go up to rescue them.”
EFD spokesman Glen Potter said the rescue of a wheelchair user is similar to an injured person but can be labor intensive. Firefighters respond from a nearby station at 17th Avenue and Agate Street and work with DPS.
“One advantage we have at the University is the Department of Public Safety,” Potter said. “They help us with access to buildings and help locate the fire.”
Eppli said DPS will typically respond to a fire first and will try to locate a fire with the help of fire panels in each building.
Contact the crime, health and safety reporter at [email protected]