reading this weeks League Express and i could not help notice the section about the fire alert at Halifax which delayed the match.

What shocked me most was the comment that the disabled were just left in the disabled section while the rest of the stand was evacuated.

Now this is a disgraceful failure in safety procedures at the ground and hopefully will be investigated fully by the fire authorities.
I would also expect the RFL to ask for a report from Halifax on what went wrong and what they are going to do to ensure that this cannot happen again.

Thankfully it was not a real fire, and apprently caused by someone smoking int he toilets. If it was a genuine alert, and disabled people were left to burn to death, it would be a shocking situation for Halifax and the RFL to find themselves in. The club would face massive law suits.

The building I work in has places on the stair wells to leave wheelchair uses while everyone else flees.

This is common practice especially if they share the same exit routes and has been advised by the many Disabled authorities and the fire authorities that this should happen. Even those with limited mobility are advised that in case of any emergency they should remain in their seats until told to leave. It sounds bad but in a panic it could hinder any evacuation.

I steward at rugby matches and its the same every where, you could most likely get more able bodied people out in the same time it might try to get a blind/wheelchair user out, in a fire its about trying to save as many lifes as possible

I appreciate the logic of this, sort of a survival of the fittest.

However seems strange that even after all the able bodied people were apparently evacuated onto the pitch, that the disabled people were seemingly not moved out of the stand.

I would also suggest that in a crowd of just a few thousand that crowd congestion would not be an issue.

It would depend on where the fire alarm originated from wouldn't it? so numbers wouldn't necessarily be an issue.

In my hospital if the fire alarm goes in our area then we are to evacuate and leave the bed ridden patients in their beds. Its just a sad fact of life that you can't help everybody in an emergency.

This all begs the question as to why the Government passes laws to ensure disabled people have to have equal access to all venues, yet at the same time regards these self same people as expendable second class citizens when it comes to an emergency.

surely if you put the facilities in place for these people to get into buildings, you should also expect them to have equal rights when it came to getting out of the building in an emergency.

As someone with some limited professional experience in this area, it is common practice for disabled people to be moved to a refuge area within a building in the event of a 'fire' evacuation. In most multi-level buildings, this is usually the fire protected central core / stairwell.

This is also one of the reasons why an effective fire warden system should be in place in building and upon evacuation, these wardens report to the senior person (incident co-ordinator) and highlight the presence of disabled persons and their locations within a building.

The main priority of the fire service is the protection of life, thus as soon as they arrive, the fire service go rescue the disabled persons in the central core area, which should be designed to be fire proofed for an extended period (certainly longer than the travel time for them to get to a building) and to give ample time for the fire brigade to enter the building and rescue those people still inside.

Any commercial premises should have a suitable and sufficent fire, rescue and evacuation plan in place to comply with current fire law and this will be the first thing that the local fire & resuce authority would look at in the event that they would be carrying out an audit / investigation on the back of any incident.

Likewise, the local authority, who have resonsibility for the safety in sports venues should also be ensuring their plans are sufficent and that their licensing proceedures are robust enough to ensure that grounds under their control are truly safe.

I think you'll find that in the case of a hospital, they have a staged evacuation plan .... The building should be engineered for containment and thus, in the event of fire resources would be used to remove those at danger in the immeditate vicinity of the seat of the fire, whilst other parts of the same building should be functioning 'normally' (or at least on stand-by to get out)

How much harm could you do to seriously ill patients with an unnecessary evacuation ?

They are certainly not classed as 'expendable' in the eyes of the law, however there is some flexibility in the proceedures for their evacuation compared to 'able-bodied' fans, hence safe refuges.

At the 6th Form College i worked at, each building had a room which disabled people were to be left in the result of evacuation.

The Fire Brigade were aware/made aware of this.

Fairly common i think

Absolute disgraceful , leaving people to die on all that highly inflammable concrete

Yep I know this. hence why we have different alarms depending on where the potential fire is plus all the fire doors to contain the fires.

However if there was a fire on my ward we are to get all able bodied persons out and leave those who can't. To be fair I do work on ICU where it would be impossible to get them out seems as though they would all be ventilated etc... and on the top floor.

I also bet you're fairly high on the list of buildings that your local fire & rescue authority takes an active interest in, in terms of knowing the building and having specific plans and training around dealing with an emergency on your premises.

I would bloody hope so lol

One of my many and varied duties is that of fire marshall.
Partly as a result of the litigious society we now find ourselves in, it is LAW that in the event of a fire, the disabled are to be left at designated "refuge" points in the event of a fire.
Effectively this is a law that is expecteded to be broken, because decent people would not leave a disabled person (not even Headhunter) to burn in a fire. Then if anything goes wrong, like an able bodied fire evacuee dying in the process of aiding a disabled person, the law can say it is because of a breach of porcedure.

It's the same with Paramedics and ambulancemen. Did you know that they are not allowed (under punishment of dismissal) to carry an ill or injured person down stairs to the ambulance? Health & Safety regulations. Family members have to do it. Needless to say, THAT rule is also broken with some regularity. The law actually RELIES on the humanity of the ambulance crews choosing to break the law. It just prevents Ambulance men from suing under the Health & Safety legislation That SHOULD, but is unable, to protect them.

Not 'Fax's fault in any way.

It probably shouldn't have done but the first thing I thought of when reading this was the scene in 'The Office' when Brent leaves the wheelchair bound Brenda on the stairwell, whilst saying 'Obviously if this was a real fire we would take you all the way down'.

Which makes you think that Gervais deliberately put that piece in the episode, as a critique of current health and safety regulations relating to evacuating disabled people from buildings.

Well I for one would not leave my son who is blind as well as having Autism behind. He would be first out along with me.

Really ?

Which one ?

Care to cite the legislation concerned ?



And of course, in those buildings without a secure refuge area, then other arrangements have to be made ... Like Evac-Chairs for example.

Do you have a clue how long a refugue area is 'fire safe' for, compared to the response times of your local fire and rescue service ?



Again, want to quote me the legislation ?

Certainly all paramedics I know are trained in personal manual handling techniques, or are you talking about the 'ambulance men' that merely drive patients to and from hospital ?

Are you mixing genuine H & S law with a) mis-guided rubbish published in certain newspapers or b) local rules imposed probably as a result of some clueless insurance underwriter somewhere, refusing cover to organisations because they can't quantify the risk properly or generally don't fancy insuring it ....



Whilst not wanting deal with this specific case without the proper facts, any organisation that doesn't have a proper fire risk assessment in place (the 'fire certificate' from the local fire brigade went out over 5 years ago) is risking big fines :

Shell :
[urlhttp://www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/646D3F976B4F43E192CF23E0CF546FC4_PR1119.asp[/url

New Look :
[urlhttp://www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/646D3F976B4F43E192CF23E0CF546FC4_PR1263.asp[/url

NB - Both of those organisations should have known better and paid heavily for their lapses. It is interesting to note that in both those incidents, no-one was killed, yet the best part of £1million was levied in fines & costs.

Very good point well made. Anyone who has seen the memory haunting scenes of the Bradford City fire in 1985 will know how speed is of the essence. Granted a fire like that is very unlikely to happen in the modern stadiums of today but even if they knew it was a false alarm, they should have done the drill because you never know when it might be for real.

when planes evacuate the disabled are left until last also i believe.
it is common practise on evacuation.

I was one of the people stood on the pitch and I was stood near to disabled people on the pitch .There were quite a few of them so not sure where this story has come from.

That's about as much nonsense packed into 2 paragraphs as I think I've ever seen. Well done.