The evacuation of hotel guests

[stewbow]

I have recently installed a large addressable FA System in a hotel. The owner is a friend of mine, and I have been banging on about the RRO to him for a couple of years, he's also in the process of upgrading all his doors throughout aswell.
But now, having gone to all that expence, he is bewildered about the neccesety to train staff to help disabled people to get out of the building in the event of a fire.
The local Fire Officer has quoted the Sleeping Accommodation Guide, and stated that it was upto the hotelier and the staff to be capable of getting everybody out of the building unaided and without the help of the FARS.
We are talking here about upto 90 guests, most of them well above pension age.

The Residential Care Guide talks about a "Progressive Horizontal Evactuation" proceedure. Could he adopt this same proceedure in his hotel, baring in mind that we are dealing to some extent with a similar clientel?

Another concern is, if there was an alarm situation in the middle of the night, when the only 2 available members of staff are in bed on the 1st floor, could there be any comeback on the proprioter for not having the cast from Thunderbirds on hand to evacuate everybody before the Brigade arrives?

[PhilB]

The responsible person must do everything reasonable in the circumstances to ensure the safety of the guests. He cannot rely on FRS to do this. Progressive horizontal evacuation is a possibility but this would need to supported by a reliable fire safety policy and I would suspect that more than 2 members of staff would be needed.

[kurnal]

His best bet is not to go for progressive horizontal evacation. This is very labour intensive and not suitable for most hotels, the concept was for care homes oand hospitals where most of the clients rely on the staff for their safety in case of fire. So the staff go to the vicinity of the fire and assist the clients at greatest risk  to a place of relative safety on the same floor. You need a lot of fire doors.

A big hotel may consider staged alarm and evacuation, something completely different. But the best solution would be to remember that the majority of the guests will be ambulant and able to make their own way out of the building without assistance from the staff. So let them, leaving the staff to worry about those few who cannot or will not evacuate themselves. Find out at registration about the special needs of the guests and if possible put them in safe rooms accordng to their needs, eg wheelchair users on the ground floor so they can evacuate under their own steam like everyone else. If you have to place them on upper floors provide refuges in the staircases, consider evacuation chairs and train the staff how to use them. If the wheel chair user can make their own way to the refuge, can communicate or are accompanied, then there is no great haste to evacuate them. The staircase should be safe for 30 minutes. Leave a member of staff with them or at least a friend with communicarions, able to help them out if the situation worsens but dont move them down unnecessarily. Ask the brigade for advice on their arrival. I believe this is as much as you need to do.

[Chris Houston]

The Residential Care Guide talks about a "Progressive Horizontal Evactuation" proceedure. Could he adopt this same proceedure in his hotel, baring in mind that we are dealing to some extent with a similar clientel?

Similar clientel; different buildings and different staff.  I think it is a bad idea.  I think hospitals have plenty horizonal places to go, easier corridors, and good vertical compartmentation.  I doubt if the hotel is designed to the same standard as the hospital and has the same staff-customer ratio.

[stewbow]

Kurnal

Very interested in your comment regarding staged alarms, I was talking to the owner last night about just that.
The system I installed is capable of 32 zones with seperate alarm stages if required (i'll have to read the manual again).
It seems logical to me that efforts are concentrated on the area local to the point of alarm for the 1st few minutes, rather than having an imediate mass exodus throughout. It could be set up so that if on investigation a fire is discovered, a manual call point could be pressed which would then sound in every room.

This would I assume all have to written up iin their emergency plan.

[kurnal]

The detection zones, alarm zones and physical separation will have to co-incide with each other for it to work. If it is to be practicable the buidling must lend itself to it- people in a zone not being evacuated in the first instance must have at the very least one fire door between them and the affected zones and a common staircase may need lobby approach- all depends on the nature and height of the building. Personally I would opt to keep it simple if at all possible in most buildings.

[wee brian]

You need to look carefully at the compartmentation if you are going for a staged alarm - it needs to be good or the fire may move faster thatn your evacuation procedure.

To be honest I dont think this is a good idea in an exisitng building without some serious work on the way it is built.

It is the responsibility of the staff to organise an evacuation and to assist those people that need it. If people can walk to their rooms then they can walk back out again. if the building is adequately maintaned the fire won't spread that quickly so this shouldnt be too much of a problem.

The easiest policy for wheelchair users is to keep them on the ground floor.

[Chris Houston]

Very interested in your comment regarding staged alarms, I was talking to the owner last night about just that.

Ask yourself this, do you really want to keep people in a burning building? Are you that certain of the building's ability to resist a fire for long enough for them to hang about?

[Fishy]

If the means of escape is reasonable (i.e. a fire in one place is unlikely to lead to people being trapped), compartmentation is checked by a competent person and is OK (the alarm is new, so that shouldn't be an issue), sufficient staff are always on site and are quickly able to respond and they are appropriately trained, I see no obvious reason to dismiss a two-stage alert/evacuate strategy.  Do the risk assessment (download Guide 3 from the DCLG website for guidance on how to justify to yourselves what's acceptable).  

I have to say, however, that the Firefighter's right about evacuation of the disabled - your friend invites them into his/her premises and charges them for the privilege, and it's up to them to work out how to evacuate them safely and to deploy sufficient trained staff to facilitate that evacuation.  It's not acceptable to leave them in a burning building until a big red truck turns up.

[Pip]

and what about some of these 'Travel******' that have either no staff on site or at best a porter?

[jokar]

You pay your money!!!  Evacuation is not the perogative of the FRS, that is for the RP.  FRS are there for saving lives.  That means that vunerable people have the same rights as the rest of us and the managers have to have an evacuation plan that works for the premises.  I was under the impression that sleeping risk premise, hotels etc had to have a single stage evacuation strategy or is that just a comment in the Building Regs?

[Ken Taylor]

Once the staff have discovered the location of the fire from the panel and, if posible, gone to that compartment, they can, if safe to do so, start encouraging 'progressive horizontal evacuation' for any hearing impaired, etc - but I would be very concerned about an alarm system based upon notification for this type of evacuation in an existing building where this was not part of the original design strategy.

Hasn't the local fire officer given any advice to assist the owner in drawing up the fire strategy for the hotel?

Whilst the owner needs a plan that enables the guests to evacuate and that includes assisting those that need assistance, it should be quite reasonable to expect those that can walk to their rooms to do the reverse when notified of a fire.

[kurnal]

If as a hotelier I have a guest who is a wheelchair user, If I have done all I reasonably can to ofer them the use of a ground floor room but that does not suit (where do I stand with the DDA? I cant refuse them a room on an upper floor without good reason), If I provide a refuge in a protected route and make sure that they either have a relative or a member of staff to accompany them to the refuge and remain with them, a method of them communicating with my night manager to make us aware that they are there, an evacuation chair to get them down the stairs in the hands of my night manager if the staircase becomes untenable pending the arrival of the fire brigade then I am adamant that I have done all that is reasonably practicable under the Legislation. I am not going to risk ther health and wellbeing by moving them into the evacuation chair and down the stairs unless the fire conditions  at the time require it, they are probable safer in the refuge.  Otherwise what is the point of providing a refuge in the protected route? All things being equal I am going to monitor their welfare and take advice from the fire service on arrival on the need to evacuate or not.

And if I do all this and you serve an enforcement notice on me then I am certainly going to appeal.  Over to you.

[jokar]

If that is the evacuation strategy and is tested and works then great.  One small issue is that of the evac chair, many wheelchair users do not like to be put in one and prefer to stay in their chair.  There is also the training aspect, the member of staff who is placed in the refuge needs to be trained in how to put someone in a chair or to move the occupant in their wheelchair.  Perhaps 2 or 3 staff are then required, only testing will tell.  DDA and Part M are about individuals and this has to be recognised in any plans made.  Very difficult when the vunerable people are guests in a hotel for the first time.

[kurnal]

Transfer of a wheelchair user into the evac chair is always a difficult and potentially hazardous for all concerned. As you say jokar it is a process of negotiation and consent but I dont think there is any safe way of manhandling a standard wheelchair down a staircase irrespective of the number of staff. Thats why I would prefer a strategy of of staying put in the refuge if safe and possible

And I would always draw the line when it comes to someone who for whatever reason cannot be safely transferred by the hotel staff into the evacuation chair. I think this is where the hotelier has reasonable grounds to refuse to provide accommodation on the upper floors without breach of the DDA.