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Strategies for creating evacuation messages

• Background
• What we do now
• The future of evacuation messaging
• React, Evaluate, Decide (RED)
• Evaluating information

Background
The view on what NFPA says about building evacuation measures during emergency events is going to be scrutinized no matter what we say or how we say it. While it is important to continue to stress the messages and concepts based on what we know about building evacuation during a fire or similar emergency, the public may be reluctant to adhere to that message. In some cases, family members who have dealt with a loss of life are going to be resentful of hearing the traditional message of "stay where you are".

In terms of the delivery of this approach, we have to gently stress that ‘we know what we know about the normal or typical fire in a building, but we don't know all about the atypical event that we must now educate the public for.' There is a classic thought that in some cases, good decisions can still have bad outcomes. We have to determine how to convey an idea that is at best a paradox and if we are not careful, it will send a mixed, confusing and garbled message to the public.

Since the first fire investigation of a high-rise building fire (Triangle Shirtwaist, 1911), NFPA has utilized the lessons learned including the need to have multiple, readily available exit stairs from buildings, get the occupants moving who are, or may be in imminent danger, educate the public about the importance of drills, and plan to tighten up the design elements associated with taller buildings. As tall building construction was typified in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, the necessary means to adequately protect the occupants was an enormous challenge.

Widespread use of "fire proof" construction including substantial compartmentation on each floor provided a serious redundancy to the other features of the building -- exits, well-marked corridors, and control of interior finish materials. Collectively, these elements worked together to provide a safe and secure environment in most high-rise buildings. The life loss record in these buildings in the U.S. is in reality good overall, but it is far from perfect.

While the Uniform Building Code began to mandate automatic sprinkler protection in some high-rise buildings in the 1970s, the watershed fire that placed all code-writing bodies on notice was the 1980 MGM Hotel fire in Las Vegas. This fire clearly showed the vulnerability that high-rise buildings had in spite of having careful control of construction material including almost one hundred percent use of fire resistive construction. The vast majority of the MGM fire fatalities occurred many floors away from the ground floor where the fire originated. A number of factors contributed to this loss of life including a delay in activation of the building fire alarm. Additionally, some people stayed on the upper floors even after hearing the alarm.

In December 1998, four civilian fatalities occurred at the West 60th Street Towers in Manhattan. The four occupants who died were found in one of the buildings stairwells. All four were attempting to exit the building as a result of a fire that originated on the twelfth floor. The occupants all came from levels well above the floor of origin.

In both the case of the MGM fire and the West 60th Towers, diametrically opposed outcomes were likely for most (all of the Manhattan fire victims) if different decisions had been made. In MGM, perhaps more occupants would have survived had they heeded the sound from the delayed alarm and evacuated the building. In New York, all four occupants were better off had they stayed in their dwelling units. These two fires introduce the complex process that is normally associated with crafting a public education message about emergency procedures in a high-rise building environment.

What we do now
Nearly every city with high-rise buildings has embraced the staged evacuation or staged relocation concept when it comes to high-rise buildings. In other parlance, this is a version of the defend in place strategy. In this model, occupants on the fire floor (or floor where an alarm has originated) are notified of the problem. Generally, occupants on the adjacent floors, immediately above and immediately below, are also notified. These groups are then generally directed to move down the stairs to a refuge floor, or in some cases, they may be instructed to leave the building. The concept of staged evacuation is drawn out of a number of elements. Among these are the extremely conservative design features that are associated with high-rise buildings. This includes extensive use of fire resistive and non-combustible construction, automatic sprinkler systems (including retro-fit of many high-rise buildings in the U.S. following MGM Grand), building wide fire alarm systems, most of which incorporate a voice message component, and for the most part, great predictability on expected fire growth rates and fire behavior.

While exit stairs in tall buildings are indeed designed to accommodate total building evacuation, there are practical matters associated with always having to empty the total building population. Some of these items include:

Another by-product of this approach is also the need to minimize or reduce business interruption or productivity. Although not a primary consideration in the staged evacuation concept, it is nonetheless a fourth or fifth level consideration in this idea.

The future of evacuation messaging
In 1997, an in-house NFPA Task Group (with two outside participants) worked on the issue of public response to emergences in high-rise buildings. The message is a complex one and may be difficult to whittle it down to a simplified expression or easy to recall process but we have to try.

1. We need to couch the information that we know about right now and somehow reassure the general public that this protocol works for the types of emergency events that buildings are currently designed to handle.
    
2. We need to emphasize that ultimately every individual is responsible for his or her own safety. Building codes, fire codes, those who enforce such codes, and building owners all work in harmony to help provide a safe environment, but these collective pieces have inherent boundaries that they are designed for. This even extends to those with severe mobility impairments. This segment of society is already dependent on the defend in place strategies that we utilize in all environments.
   
   One of our Frequently Asked Questions relates to the decision to tell occupants of the World Trade Center´s Tower 2 to stay in the building on September 11, 2001. The argument for doing this may be that the only know fact early on was that there was a significant amount of debris reigning down for Tower 1. Occupants who left either tower via the street level plaza were likely to have been severely injured or killed by falling glass, aluminum, marble, steel, concrete or nearly any other construction material. The decision that was made for Tower 2 created a dilemma that was not fully known until some time after the first impact.
    
3. We need to remind the public to be prepared to take action for any building emergency. While a fire is the most likely emergency scenario they are likely to encounter, other perils that may require total or partial building evacuation exist including tornadoes, bomb threats and even extended power outages.

Our traditional messages and statements by and large support these three actions. Self-preservation measures, however, become incredibly complex when the extreme event takes place. Even in the short term, there is likely to be a change in public attitude when a building emergency takes place. Total building evacuation may be the norm until some sense of comfort is brought back into the picture.

React, Evaluate, Decide (RED)
The NFPA task group had resolved that the action of staying or going was an extremely dynamic action and decision. It is never the same for two buildings, and even within the same building, it is unlikely that any two events will give the exact same outcome. After several meetings, the task group settled on the acronym RED that is a universal symbol for danger. In our context, RED is an easy to remember expression for React, Evaluate, Decide. Although the task group agreed that this was a relatively clear expression of what a building occupant should do in the event of an emergency, it was ultimately decided that trying to codify, explain or otherwise convey this message was overly complicating the message for the public.

We now know that indeed building occupants have to be prepared for actual, rather theoretical complex evacuation procedures. The RED model thus may be appropriate. While the public at large has generally come to expect that all buildings are safe all the time, or that the building owner and fire department will manage buildings with some dangerous situation, the public has to be feeling rather vulnerable at this particular point in time. The principles of the RED model are:

This process is iterative. It is not only done at the first hint of a dangerous situation. It is a process that the individual must manage and it needs to be repeated until the danger has passed or, if total building evacuation is in order, when that action is completed.

In this process, information is key. Too much, too little, or inaccurate information can lead to hasty decisions or decisions with poor outcomes. A large part of the reaction to the danger will center on what you know and when you know it. Information is available via building voice communication systems, cell phones, radio, live TV and word of mouth from other building occupants.

Evaluating information
Evaluation of the information must be done as quickly as possible. The essence of this feature is to determine if you are in immediate danger, or if the evidence of peril suggest otherwise. A difficult part of this process involves your own capabilities as well as the capabilities of others. Can you negotiate 50 flights of stairs? Have you been assigned as a buddy to a mobility-impaired co-worker?

Given the response to the items that you evaluate, your initial decision is now ready to be made. Even given the ability to drill, review building procedures and study the building exits, you are still ultimately responsible for this last part.

In this, or any similar response to building emergencies, some difficult questions arise as to the need to defend the mobility-impaired occupants. At present, modern building codes either provide areas of refuge on each floor, or in the case of buildings with automatic sprinkler protection, provide access to at least two compartments on each floor. In typical fires, these protection features are more than adequate. These design elements provide a safe environment while occupants await rescue.

Use of elevators by the disabled, or controlled stairwell decent devices are simply not practical in actual buildings during emergency events. Elevator use is difficult to control. It is unlikely that able-bodied persons could be kept off of elevators if they thought it would get them to the ground floor more quickly. There is simply no mechanism that can restrict the elevator use to those who need it most.

The descent devices raise another moral dilemma in that stairs are simply not designed to accommodate such devices and the necessary egress width for individuals who descend the stairs under their own power. This dilemma engages a ‘fairness' debate on if one person can potentially slow the progress of what could be many hundreds.

In gross terms, keeping on message with current educational and didactic treatment of building evacuation is correct, although it must be done with the utmost of sensitivity. The idea of enhancing these messages with the somewhat more complex RED approach may be appropriate at this time. Building evacuation and defend in place concepts just became much more complex, and we need to begin to expand our discussion on such items.