Evacuating everyone: students and staff who need assistance

An evacuation plan that works for a class of able-bodied teenagers can fail completely for a second-grade student who uses a wheelchair, a kindergarten child who bolts when the alarm sounds, a deaf student in a washroom, a student with autism who cannot tolerate the noise, or a teacher on crutches after knee surgery. Every school has people like this, and in an emergency they are often the ones at greatest risk. This lesson is about planning so that everyone gets out, or gets to a safe place, without depending on improvisation in the worst moment.

Who may need help

The group is larger and more varied than people expect. It includes:

• Students and staff who use wheelchairs, walkers, crutches or canes, or who cannot manage stairs quickly.
• People who are deaf or hard of hearing and may not hear an alarm or announcement, especially in a washroom or a quiet room.
• People who are blind or have low vision and need guidance through unfamiliar routes or around obstacles.
• Students with autism, sensory processing differences, anxiety or past trauma, for whom the alarm, the crowd and the change of routine can cause distress, shutdown or running.
• Students with intellectual disabilities who may not understand what is happening or what to do.
• Students with medical conditions such as severe asthma, seizures or heart conditions that may be triggered by exertion, cold or stress.
• Very young children, who need close supervision and may freeze, hide or run.
• Temporary needs: a broken leg, late pregnancy, a recent surgery, or a student who has just arrived and does not know the building or the language.
• Visitors, volunteers and members of the public using the building after hours, whose needs are unknown.

Many of these students have an Individualized Education Program (IEP), a Section 504 plan, an individualized health plan or a behavior intervention plan. The emergency assistance plan should be connected to those documents, so that the information is consistent and kept up to date.

Individual emergency assistance plans

The district requires an individual emergency assistance plan for every student or staff member who may need help in an emergency. The plan is short, usually one page, and answers a handful of practical questions:

• What help does this person need in each type of emergency: evacuation, lockdown, shelter, severe weather?
• Who is the primary helper, and who are the alternates for each period of the day, including lunch, recess and before and after school?
• What route does the person use, and what is the backup if an elevator or ramp cannot be used?
• What equipment is needed: an evacuation chair, a manual wheelchair, noise-canceling headphones, a visual card, medication?
• How is the person alerted if they cannot hear the alarm?
• What calms or helps the person, and what makes things worse?
• Who do the staff tell if the person is not with them when the alarm sounds?

The plan is shared with everyone who may be responsible for the person, including supply staff, and a copy is kept in the class emergency folder. It is reviewed at the start of each year, when the person's needs change, and after every drill that shows a problem.

Elevators, stairs and areas of refuge

Elevators are not used for evacuation during a fire unless the fire department directs it, because the elevator may stop at the fire floor, the shaft can fill with smoke, and power may fail. Most elevators return to the ground floor automatically when the fire alarm sounds and are then available only to firefighters. That leaves a problem for anyone on an upper floor who cannot use stairs.

Building codes deal with this in a few ways. Many buildings have protected stairwells with a landing large enough for a wheelchair, or a designated area of refuge, a space protected from fire and smoke where a person can wait for firefighters. Some newer buildings have elevators designed for occupant evacuation. Older schools may have none of these, which is one reason the district tries to timetable classes with students who cannot use stairs on the ground floor.

When a person who cannot use stairs is on an upper floor during an alarm, the usual procedure is:

• The primary helper goes with the person to the designated refuge area or protected stairwell landing.
• Another adult goes down and outside and reports the person's exact location to the incident commander, who tells the fire department immediately.
• The helper stays with the person unless the danger becomes immediate.
• If the school has an evacuation chair and trained staff, they may move the person down the stairs once the main flow of people has passed, if it is safe to do so.

Evacuation chairs

An evacuation chair is a lightweight chair with tracks or skids that lets one or two trained people move a seated person down stairs. It is safer for the person and the helpers than carrying, which risks dropping the person and injuring the helpers' backs. Evacuation chairs only help if they are in the right place, maintained, and used by people who have practiced. A chair still in its box in a storage room, or a chair that nobody has used since the salesperson's demonstration, is worse than useless because it creates a false sense of safety.

Pinecrest High School has two chairs, one at the top of each main stair in the 1968 wing, and six staff trained to use them, including Sam Whitford and two custodians. They practice twice a year with a volunteer, usually a staff member, never with a student until the staff are confident. Willow Park, which is mostly single-story, has one chair for the second floor of the 2004 wing.

Alerting people who cannot hear

Modern alarm systems include visual signals, strobe lights, in classrooms, corridors and washrooms. Older wings may have strobes only in corridors, which leaves gaps. A deaf student alone in a washroom or a single-occupant room may not know an alarm is sounding. Solutions include adding strobes, assigning a buddy who checks on the student, sweeping washrooms as part of every evacuation, and personal devices such as vibrating pagers linked to the alarm system. For announcements that are not fire alarms, such as lockdown or secure, visual displays, text messages to staff devices and a staff member checking in person all help.

Students with behavior or sensory needs

Some students react to an alarm by covering their ears and refusing to move, dropping to the floor, hiding under a desk or running. These reactions are not defiance. They are the student's nervous system responding to a loud, sudden, unexpected event. The assistance plan should describe what the student is likely to do and what helps, such as:

• Noise-canceling headphones kept in a known place, ready to put on at the first sound.
• A visual card or social story, practiced beforehand, that shows the steps of an evacuation.
• A familiar adult who stays close and uses short, calm instructions.
• Leaving slightly before or after the main flow of students, during drills, to reduce crowding, while practicing the full route.
• A plan for running: which adult follows, how the office is told, where the student tends to go.

Jenna's resource room at Willow Park practices evacuation more often than the official drill schedule. In September, she walks each student through the route several times with no alarm. Then she plays a recorded alarm quietly, then louder. By the first official drill, most of her students know what is coming. One student, Mateo, still runs, so his plan names two adults: Jenna stays with the group and the vice-principal, who knows him well, follows Mateo and radios the office. The plan also notes that Mateo usually heads for the swings, which gives the vice-principal somewhere to look first.

Planning helpers for every time of day

The biggest weakness of assistance plans is that they name one helper and assume that person will always be there. In reality, the helper may be on lunch, in a meeting, absent, or with another student. A good plan names helpers by time of day and location and includes a fallback rule, such as: the adult nearest to the student takes responsibility until the named helper arrives. The program below checks a set of assistance plans for gaps, meaning periods of the day when no helper is named.

# Check assistance plans for periods with no named helper.
periods = ["before school", "period 1", "period 2", "lunch", "period 3", "period 4", "after school"]
plans = {
    "Student A (wheelchair, 2nd floor)": {"before school": "J. Kowalchuk", "period 1": "J. Kowalchuk", "period 2": "J. Kowalchuk",
                                          "period 3": "R. Singh", "period 4": "R. Singh"},
    "Student B (deaf)": {p: "class buddy + teacher" for p in periods},
    "Student C (runs when alarmed)": {"period 1": "J. Kowalchuk", "period 2": "J. Kowalchuk", "lunch": "lunch EA",
                                       "period 3": "J. Kowalchuk", "period 4": "J. Kowalchuk"},
    "Staff D (crutches, 6 weeks)": {"period 1": "colleague next door", "period 3": "colleague next door"},
}
for who, helpers in plans.items():
    gaps = [p for p in periods if p not in helpers]
    print(f"{who:36} gaps: {', '.join(gaps) if gaps else 'none'}")

Student A (wheelchair, 2nd floor)    gaps: lunch, after school
Student B (deaf)                     gaps: none
Student C (runs when alarmed)        gaps: before school, after school
Staff D (crutches, 6 weeks)          gaps: before school, period 2, lunch, period 4, after school

Every plan except Student B's has gaps, and most are at the edges of the day and at lunch, which is exactly when real emergencies are hardest to manage. The fixes are simple once the gaps are visible: add the before-school supervisor and the lunch paraprofessional to Student A's plan, and add the after-school program staff to Student C's. Staff D's plan needs the colleague for every period the teacher is in that room, and a second option for the periods when the teacher is elsewhere.

Lockdown, shelter and severe weather

Assistance plans must cover more than fire. In a lockdown, a student who vocalizes loudly when stressed, or who cannot stay still, needs a plan for staying quiet and calm, which might involve a weighted blanket, a favorite object or a quiet activity. A student who uses a wheelchair needs a pre-planned out-of-sight spot in the classroom. In a tornado warning, a student with a medical condition may need medication brought to the refuge area. In a long shelter, a student with diabetes needs access to snacks and supplies. Each of these is easy to plan for in advance and very hard to solve in the moment.

Staff with temporary needs and visitors

Staff members should tell the principal when an injury, pregnancy or medical condition might affect their ability to evacuate quickly or lead a class out. The principal then arranges a temporary plan, which might include moving the teacher's classes to the ground floor or pairing the teacher with a colleague. This is kept confidential and limited to what is needed.

Visitors are harder. The school cannot know the needs of every parent at a concert or every community group using the gym in the evening. The plan therefore includes general measures: announcements at the start of large events showing the exits, staff at each exit during events, and a rule that event organizers sweep the areas they are using and report anyone who needs help.