How to Evacuate Safely

How to Evacuate Safely – Health and safety officials have to accept that there are limitations when it comes to providing a safe workplace. Incidents do happen, unfortunately. But as long as they can ensure that everybody can evacuate safely, it is fair to claim the health and safety officer did his or her job right.

There is no cure for stupidity nor is there any medicine against bad luck. When this happens, most people will ask for help and guidance from a spiritual, higher source, but few will realise the importance of the health and safety official guiding them to safety. A well-marked and unobstructed emergency-door or escape route could mean the difference between an incident remaining an incident or an incident turning into a disaster.

Many people will claim that emergency doors and escape routes are 'too much in the face' and 'affect the beauty of a room or building'. Others see the empty space, which is required in front of these doors or routes, as the perfect place to store goods. They believe that the valuable open space will, otherwise, go to waste. From a business point of view, this all makes sense: but from a health and safety point of view, it is simply unacceptable.

When panic kicks in, people automatically go into survival-mode. It is never acceptable that, in the event of an incident, only the strongest survive.

Emergency doors and escape routes have to be clearly visible and that they are easy to access. Although they will-, hopefully, never have to be used, it is that one moment when employees have to rely on them, that will make the difference.

The doors and routes have to be clearly marked and visible in a way that even employees seated the furthest away will be able to quickly identify the nearest escape exit. Extra lights and signs are a good start, but it must not be forgotten that these lights and signs still have to work when the incident is turning into a disaster. Emergency doors and routes have to remain visibile even in case of fire of thick smoke in the area.

Employees must also be able to get to an exit quickly,which is another point that has to be looked at when a risk assessment is conducted. Corridors towards the doors and routes, and open spaces in front and immediately behind the doors, have to be able to cope with a sudden and large number of people who need to make use of the exit.

The doors and escape routes have to be made or constructed from material that can slow down or reduce the impact of the incident. This to ensure that people are safe while making use of the area, even if the entire complex is burning or falling down.

Escape routes should lead to large assembly areas where everybody who has managed to escape the office or building can be accounted for by management.

All the above will, probably, sound familiar and does make perfectly sense. Nevertheless, companies are advised to always use professional companies to ensure even the most obvious happens. While it doesn’t take an education to clear and mark an emergency door or route, scientists all over the world are experimenting with and providing new solutions every day.

Health and safety is not something that should be experimented with in the workplace. But it is also not something that can be conducted according to, or bench marked to, outdated and obsolete protocols. Expect the unexpected.