Safety Evaluation and Verification for Nighttime Fire Evacuation of Long-term Care Facilities

• Main Authors: Shin-Kai Wang, 王新凱
• Other Authors: 施邦築
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6yq897

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 土木與防災研究所 === 101 === Safe fire evacuation is to ensure that people will not be harmed by the fire flow, smoke and heat produced by fire during evacuation. The time of evacuation is dependent on the speed of evacuation. There is a significant difference in the speed of evacuation between the elderly and non-elderly people, and the main cause is the degradation of physiological functions of the elderly, which leads to the decreased mobility in the elderly. Most of the elderly suffer from decreased mobility and need the assistance from others or aids for evacuation. They are the disadvantaged group in fire evacuation. Decreased mobility of the elderly leads to increased difficulty in evacuation, extends the time of evacuation and further affects the possibility to successful evacuation. To inspect the fire evacuation of long-term care facilities, a “fire drill” can be practiced to authentically reflect the overall evacuation process, discover the deficiencies in the actual evacuation behaviors of the personnel in LTC facilities and find out the causes of casualties. This study selected 6 LTC facilities as the study sites to practice fire drill at nighttime, and conducted on-site inspection to collect relevant data, such as the usage characteristics of facilities, interior space planning, evacuation routes, residents’ mobility and caregiver-to-resident ratio, in order to inspect the status of fire evacuation of residents at each facility, investigate the differences in speed of evacuation and verify whether the fire evacuation is compliant with the current regulations on the evacuation verification of LTC facilities. The research results showed that it takes more time to assist the elderly in vertical evacuation. The use of staff who stay in LTC facilities at nighttime and recalling for support for assisting in evacuation can make up for the lack of manpower timely. The establishment of relative safe area with adequate space as the area for temporary placement can reduce walking distance, shorten the time of evacuation and increase the success rate of evacuation.