What is an evacuation strategy?
An evacuation strategy is the plan for how people leave a building in a fire — all at once, floor by floor, or by staying put until told otherwise. It has to match how the building is built and who is in it.
The strategy is a consequence of the building rather than a free choice. A stay put policy depends on compartmentation performing as designed; a phased evacuation depends on the alarm and the stairs being able to support it.
That link is what makes a compartmentation defect a strategy problem rather than a maintenance one. When the assumption behind the strategy stops holding, the strategy has to change until it is put right.
It also has to account for people who cannot follow it unaided, which is what a personal emergency evacuation plan addresses for a named individual.
In practice
A block where residents have been told to stay put and the strategy has changed.
A compartmentation survey found serious defects and the strategy moved to simultaneous evacuation, with a waking watch in place.
A change of strategy has to reach every resident, every notice and every piece of training, and the ones who need telling most are the ones who have lived there longest.
People act on what they were told when they moved in.
What goes wrong in practice
- A stay put policy left in place while known compartmentation defects are outstanding.
- Residents or staff never told what the strategy is, so they do whatever they assume.
- Strategy unchanged after a change of use brought in people the original assumptions did not cover.