Emergency Evacuation Planning Guide For People with Disabilities

USING THIS GUIDE TO DESIGN AN EVACUATION PLAN

This Guide is arranged by disability category. Use the Personal Emergency Evacuation Planning Checklist to check off each step and add the appropriate information specific to the person for whom the plan is being built.

Once the plan is complete, it should be practiced to be sure that it can be implemented appropriately and to identify any gaps or problems that require refinement so that it works as expected. Then copies should be filed in appropriate locations for easy access and given to the assistants, supervisors, co-workers, and friends of the person with the disability; building managers and staff; and municipal departments that may be first responders.

The plan should also be reviewed and practiced regularly by everyone involved. People who have a service animal should practice the evacuation drills with their service animals.

The importance of practicing the plan cannot be overemphasized. Practice solidifies everyone’s grasp of the plan, assists others in recognizing the person who may need assistance in an emergency, and brings to light any weaknesses in the plan.

While standard drills are essential, everyone should also be prepared for the unexpected. Building management should conduct unannounced as well as announced drills and vary the drills to pose a variety of challenges along designated evacuation routes, such as closed-off corridors/stairs, blocked doors, or unconscious people.

Practice and planning do make a difference. During the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a man with a mobility impairment was working on the 69th floor. With no plan or devices in place, it took over six hours to evacuate him. In the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the same man had prepared himself to leave the building using assistance from others and an evacuation chair he had acquired and had under his desk. It only took 1 hour and 30 minutes to get him out of the building this second time.

In the case of Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, a nonprofit organization, Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, a nonprofit organization, Gregory D. Bell, and Tania Morales vs. Michael R. Bloomberg, in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of New York, and The City of New York, II Civ. 6690 (JMF), in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, the Court concluded that the City violated the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the NYCHRL by failing to provide people with disabilities meaningful access to its emergency preparedness program in several ways. In particular:

(1) The City's evacuation plans do not accommodate the needs of people with disabilities with respect to high-rise evacuation and accessible transportation;

(2) its shelter plans do not require that the shelter system be sufficiently accessible, either architecturally or programmatically, to accommodate people with disabilities in an emergency;

(3) the City has no plan for canvassing or for otherwise ensuring that people with disabilities - who may, because of their disability, be unable to leave their building after a disaster - are able to access the services provided by the City after an emergency;

(4) the City's plans to distribute resources in the aftermath of a disaster do not provide for accessible communications at the facilities where resources are distributed;

(5) the City's outreach and education program fails in several respects to provide people with disabilities the same opportunity as others to develop a personal emergency plan; and

(6) the City lacks sufficient plans to provide people with disabilities information about the existence and location of accessible services in an emergency.

Emergency evacuation plans should be viewed as living documents. With building management staff, everyone should regularly practice, review, revise, and update their plans to reflect changes in technology, personnel, and procedures.