Posted by
Dave Kooker on Monday, August 10, 2009 12:37:38 PM
Typically twice a year we conduct a fire drill in our building for emergency competency. Our fire emergency stairwells are on each end of the building and are of the latest fire codes. Three average adults can easily walk three wide down the stairwell and not feel confined. This allows the two inner rows of individuals to continuously travel down the fire escape staircase while allowing the outer row to politely allow the other floors to merge into the human escape route without much disruption. With only six floors, our building of 1050+ employees is completely evacuated in 15-18 minutes.
Even with all the technological advances and strict adherence to fire codes, the test evacuation times never decrease and will probably keep increasing. The problem being, the human factor of obesity every time we conduct a test fire drill. Case in point, two months ago we conducted a test fire drill. At that time I used to reside on the fourth floor of the building. No sooner than I entered the fire escape stair case there was a woman from the 5th floor who is wider than she was tall (approx 5 feet tall) decided to play the out-of-breath drama queen between the fourth and third floor level fire escape staircase and sit down on the stair case steps. She was so fat that no one could step around her and continue the escape out of the building. Everyone in the staircase had to patiently wait 4 minutes in the staircase until Big Bertha could stand up again and walk to the corner of the stairwell and allow her fellow colleagues to migrate out of the building. In each and every time we conduct a fire drill, there is at one obese lard butt who stops and seriously disrupts the evacuation flow.
In my observations there are only two times a day when these obese lard butts move with the endurance of Jim Fixx the marathon runner and swiftly waddle; when it is lunch grazing time at the cafeteria or when the work day is over. Any other time there is great effort to move those fat stumps for legs and painfully listen as these creatures desperately gasp for their last breath of air. If the management team seriously wanted to improve fire drill evacuation times they should set the test fire drills at 11:15am when the cafeteria opens not two hours before after cafeteria hours.
Recently I have been moved to the sixth floor of the building. I really like the location next to a window where I can view the campus and the weather outside. There is still the little thought in the back of my mind about the ability to safely escape the building during an actual fire. Now I have two more floors of obese lard butts that I must travel behind before I can evacuate the building.
I am beginning to think employers and city fire ordinances need to consider an employee's physical ability before assigning an actual work location for each employee. Typically employees are grouped together by departments but with technology able to keep employees connected, the physical location of employees is not important as it once was. At first thought I considered that the obese lard butts should be located on the first floor close to the fire escape doors. By the time the obese lard butts hear the fire alarm, are able to pry their carcass off their chair, and waddle towards the fire escape doors the healthy mobile individuals from the upper floors are still blocked by the obese lard butts causing a bottleneck in the human traffic flow to the upper floors.
The opposite policy should be implemented. Place the healthiest employees closest to the fire escape doors and on the lowest floors. Once the fire alarm sounds off, the fastest employees quickly evacuate the building then the next slowest group of employees evacuate the building and continue to the slowest. Each group of employees does not impede the evacuation of the other. The greatest number of employees are able to safely escape to work another day and patriotically pay their taxes. The ACLU would probably have something to say about segregating individuals by physical capacity. Only separating and protecting subgroups by skin colour is accepted by the ACLU.
In the event of an actual building fire, I cringe at the thought that I may need to hop over Big Bertha for my own self-preservation. I am not going to be in the mood to wait for her to play the out-of-breath drama queen episode in reality. The only answer that comes to mind to avoid the physical capacity discrimination issue would be for all healthy employees to tape Twinkies onto the backs of their shirts once they hear the fire alarm. By the time the obese lard butt realizes they are out of breath chasing the Twinkie down the stairs, they are safely outside of the building. They can then gently collapse on the grass with the Twinkie in hand and wait for the Fire and Rescue trucks to revive them.
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