Evacuating Persons with Impaired Mobility

Unless you are disabled or know someone who is, you may never think about the difficulties experienced by those with impaired mobility should they need to evacuate a building because of fire, bomb alert or similar.

One could reason that the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act should serve to highlight the issue since premises must now make it easier for disabled persons to gain access. The corollary is that those who enter a building must also be able to get out – possibly needing to make a quick, unplanned exit.

Specific Considerations

Ground floor evacuation may pose fewer problems, though even in such cases, it is important to consider disabilities such as deafness, so that a person may not be aware of an audible fire alarm, or poor eyesight which makes it difficult to follow emergency exit signs and routes.

The issues become more complex if people with impaired mobility need to be evacuated from other floors, whether above or below ground level. People who find it difficult to negotiate stairs unaided will need special provisions.

Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan

If persons with impaired mobility are employed on the premises, it is important to prepare a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan that takes into account all of their personal circumstances. The purpose of the plan is to highlight the procedures for safely evacuating such person(s).

Everyone involved with executing the Plan needs to be aware of their responsibilities and receive training in any special techniques.

The kind of arrangements that may be implemented include:

Assistance from able-bodied people. This requires that there are sufficient persons present who are capable of providing the necessary help and that the physical construction, layout and dimensions of the stairway allow for assistance to be given. Additional equipment may be provided to make the evacuation easier, such as a special evacuation chair.

An extremely important consideration is that an emergency evacuation is very different from a normal exit. There may be many people all following the same route at the same time and visibility may be restricted. In such circumstances there is potential for serious obstruction to the escape route and even injury to the person(s) being helped or those who are helping.

If this option is part of the agreed fire safety precautions, the people who are to help must be clear about their responsibilities and must also be trained in using any special equipment as well as undertaking a major manual handling operation in a safe manner.


Use of a lift is usually prohibited in that ordinary lifts present more potential hazards than they solve. It is possible to provide a lift that is specifically designed to be safe in an emergency or to make certain adaptations to an ordinary lift so that it is suitable for emergency use.

These options are usually expensive, however, even when installed as part of the original design for a building. They can be even more expensive to retro-fit to existing premises.


Provide a temporary refuge area. This is an area that is specifically set aside so that persons with impaired mobility can wait until help is available to evacuate them safely. Clearly, the area itself must meet certain criteria so that the person is not at risk while they are waiting.

There is a British Standard (BS5588) that spells out what is required for a refuge area in terms of construction, location in regard to other facilities, size and other requirements.


Some form of communication channel should also be provided that is easy to use by people with impaired mobility and which is capable of withstanding damage that might result from a fire or similar emergency.

The construction and usage of buildings means that provision for evacuating vulnerable persons and those with impaired mobility may vary considerably from place to place. However, the basic approach is generally the same and in most cases will involve a combination of the options described above.