text and subtext

[cellio]

Message from landlord: "In accordance with city ordinance blah blah, we will be conducting a mandatory evacuation drill on $date at 10AM."

Implied message from landlord: "Unless you particularly want to walk down 43 flights of stairs, that might be a good day to make other plans

Comments

[dagonell]

Googling "Emergency Evacuation Disable" paints a frightening picture. It's apparently handled on a company by company basis and far too many suggest finding a room with a fire proof door, barricading yourself and calling 911. You might want to drop a line in your company suggestion box.
-- Dagonell

[cellio]

Wow, that's terrible. :-(

Our landlord is, in some ways, kind of scummy, so I doubt a note to them would do anything. My employer is mostly in another city. But fortunately we plan to be in this space for no more than another year, and I will certainly ask these questions about our long-term space.

[magid]

If I remember correctly, at a job long long ago where there was an employee in a wheelchair, there were designated people to carry the person down the stairs.

[ephemera]

(drive by comment) In the buildings I have worked in, there have been fire and blast proof refuge spaces on each fire escape, where someone in a wheelchair could shelter until the professionals show up - these are the same refuge zones that we're all supposed to use if there's a bomb, when heading outside is potentially going into danger.

[cellio]

Welcome! Please feel free to drive by any time. (Tangent: "anti abolishment of fruitcake"? Nice. I know someone who makes excellent fruitcake.)

I hadn't heard of those kinds of refuge zones before (other than below ground). Good to know.

[fauxklore]

Don't you have an evacuation chair? It's a kind of stretcher / chair thing that slides down the bannisters. We've had those available in every building over 2 stories that I've worked in.

By the way, in my current building, the fire alarms only disable elevator service to the floor the fire is allegedly on and the floors immediately above and below that one.

[cellio]

Interesting. I've never heard of those. It is of course possible that I would have heard of them if I'd ever had a coworker in a wheelchair, and it's possible we do in fact have one. I've only been there a few months and we're in temporary space (one of those "rent out offices individually from somebody who rents out the whole floor" deals, where they provide infrastructure), so maybe they're on the hook for that?

With the elevators, so the idea is that an elevator can freely pass through a floor that's on fire but just can't open there? I guess they can be made fire-resistant enough for that; I hadn't thought about that. I've never, fortunately, been in an actual fire, and for the drills they disable the elevators everywhere, in my experience. This'll be my first time for one in this particular building. (Unless I develop other plans for that morning. We're floor 43 of 45, so we'll be at the back of a crowd -- so walking down the stairs probably wouldn't be good exercise because it'll be slow.)

[cellio]

Ugh.

I trust all my coworkers to be decent human beings. I don't question people's intentions; I wonder about abilities. Two people of reasonable strength can carry someone on the flat; how do you manage that on stairs? You have to try, of course -- it would be tragic and callous not to -- but I'm trying to visualize how to do that without sending someone tumbling down the stairs.