 Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for another episode of condo insider and condo insider is a show for people who live and work at condominiums, and we try to address issues and concerns for all of our listeners. And today, our show is in response to a request to deal with the speaker of the house his name is Scott psyche he represents cock-a-coe. He had a constituent call him and tell him that there was a fire drill in her building. And apparently she's in her late 70s or something and she was going down the stairwell and she was, she was injured and so you know it was a concern that she had about, you know, emergency evacuations. So, you know, today we're going to be talking about emergency evacuations, and I have with me I'm proud to have with me on my show from the fire department, Captain Christopher, a Bartolome. Hi captain. Hi, how are you doing. Good afternoon. Thank you for being my guest on my show. And thank you for arranging on such short notice to answer all of these questions that we have. And, and I did speak to you guys about the situation. And, and, and so you know one of the questions that we came up with is you know these fire drills that buildings have. Is there something in the code that requires these fire drills. So it, it says that, you know, you should at least hold one fire drill annually. The frequency would lean towards conductor drills until you become familiar with it, or everyone knows what they're supposed to do. So it's also good for your residents to know what to do. But the drills. Address the, the building staff so they should know what to do in case there's an emergency as well. Because those are the people that the residents might be looking to for advice or looking to, or what are we doing there's a drill. So these drills are put in place so that the staff becomes familiar with it. As well as you know the residents should be be familiar with it in case something does happen. Okay, you know, and I, I, I, you know, buildings, you know, have evacuation plans. Yes. So, you know with this evacuation plans. Do you recommend that they be in writing and maybe they circulated to the owners and say hey, this is when we do a fire drill this is the way we're going to do it. And let, you know, let the owners kind of chime in and say, well, you know, you know what, you know, you know what if I can't make it down the steps, what if I broke my leg, or what if I have mobility problems I can't walk. Do I have to walk down the steps. I mean, how would you tell them how to set up their evacuation plans. Yeah, that's a good question right. So every building should have an evacuation plan for their building. They should have one that is dispersed to all the residents in the building. You should give it out annually. When you have new residents moving into your building. You should give them a plan so at least they know what to do in case there's an emergency. Right. You don't want people moving into your building and live in there and if something happens they don't know what to do. So we recommend, at least every year. You bring it up and you pass it out. If it's any changes to your plan you need to disperse that to your residents so they know what to do. Okay, and I know that with first responders and especially you mean you guys are usually the first ones at the building in case of an emergency. There is a list of vulnerability what they call vulnerable people and the building supposed to make up this list and put and there's a box that first responders have a key to so that when they come to the building, they go to that box first thing to get this list. Right, we call it the list of vulnerability and the building manager is supposed to be making this list up. What kind of information is on this list. So that list would consist of the people, like you said who are vulnerable have mobility issues, or they're not ambulatory that list should have their name the unit number at least so we know, and we know where these people are. As far as keeping that list in the box. I think you're referring to the, the box where we keep the elevator keys. Yes. We don't recommend putting it in there. What we would say or recommend is each building should have an enunciator panel for your fire alarm panel. We'll usually go to that panel to check what zone or why was alarm trip so we can find a location. So I tell people to make the list, keep it updated whenever people move out move in change units. You put it in a binder along with all of your emergency information contact names, building owners, and you put it by that enunciator panel having a binder or folder, because we're going to go to that panel. And then you keep another set of that with the building manager who has to go outside and meet the fire department. So he can share that information with the captain or the chief. So I would have two sets one by the enunciator panel, and then one for the building manager or whoever is going to go outside and meet the fire department. Okay, what, when you guys get this list, what do you do with that information. You know, that information is good because if, if suppose we have to get to that part of the building and we can see all who's in that section. It's going to be consistent. Right. So at least we'll be aware if if it's on that side of the building or this side of the building. You know, we'll be aware of it and take that into consideration and we're patting out our tactics or patting out our plan of how to attack this emergency. Okay, well let me go back to the code. Does the code require buildings to have fire drills. All right, it's, it's, I went back in was I was looking at the code and it didn't come out straight and say what we say at least annually should do it. As far as because you want your staff to become familiar with the drill, or with a plan. If, if no one's familiar with the plan where you're comfortable doing it. Everything goes down. Who's, you know, how people are going to know what to do where to go what path what egress path to take. As far as going to the drills like you're concerned about where people have mobility issues. I know you guys were wondering, oh what if this person has a hard time moving. What if they're bedridden, what if they're in a wheelchair. Right, that's my next question. Can they shelter in place. Yeah, so as far as drills go. As far as drills go we want you to participate but if you cannot. And don't you would do shelter in place if that's what you can do in an emergency if that's part of your emergency plan. Now sheltering in place is a whole different set of tips and rules that you have to do not just go back to your unit and stay there. There's things that you should do. What do you go back to your unit and shelter in place. And what are those requirements. What what do you do when you go back to your unit. So what we would say say you go back to your unit, because you have to shelter in place because you have mobility issues you're not ambulatory, or even if you can move, you try to go out and close the door and the door is hot, the fire might be there, or you try to go out to the stairwell, and there's low visibility, there's heat, there's smoke. That kind of thing is also going to make you have to shelter in place. So you go back into your unit, and you're going to shelter in place now what you're going to do is, you're going to put a wet towel or tape around your door to block the smoke from coming into the space underneath or around the door because you don't want smoke coming into your unit. Once smoke gets in your unit becomes uninhabitable and you're going to be stuck in the same situation as if you went into the smoky hallway. You're going to block the spaces around the door with a wet towel or a blanket, or if you have duct tape you tape around the door to seal the space. You're also going to do that with, if you have air conditioning vents, you're going to take cover that up because you don't want smoke coming in that way either. You close all your windows and doors because what if smoke comes out from the outside and starts coming in from the outside into your unit. Now you have smoke coming in that way so you have to, you're sealing yourself in so smoke doesn't get in there you want to keep your space sterile right. So once you do that, then you can get, go on your cell phone or your phone and you call 911 and you say, I'm at this building that has a fire. I have to shelter in place. I'm in unit, for example, unit 501. So at least we know that oh there's someone in unit 501 that's sheltering in place as well right. If it's at night, you can shine flashlights to the window going to the outside. So then we'll see from the outside. Or you can wave brightly colored towel or blanket through the window so hopefully we'll see you waving that through the window from the outside. So those are all the things that you should do when you shelter in place not just go in and close your door and and wait. You have to do some stuff to keep yours, keep your unit smoke free. So you can stay there until we can come and get you. So going out to the lie is not a safe thing to do when you're sheltering in place. No, I would stay inside and you can you close up. Okay. And, you know, getting back to, you know, the escape routes, you know, some buildings actually have like a floor plan. They have like a map. Every floor that has arrows and it says you are here. Right. And it tells you where to go. Do you recommend that buildings put that up in their buildings on each floor. So in addition to the emergency plan that you give to all your residents annually, if it's updated, or when it's when residents move in and you give them the emergency packet so they have the map in there. In addition to that, you can post your evacuation plan that has all your egress routes, the stairwells. You can put on that map where you have fire extinguishers. You can put in that map where they have pull stations. I would put that where everyone sees it so maybe like in all the elevator banks, because when they're waiting for the elevator, they can at least take a look at it. You know, or you can put it by the entrance to your stairwell or down in the entrance and by the lobby, just somewhere where people congregate for a while and then they can see it. But they should be given that plan. If they don't have one updated annually if you have to then pass out the new plan, just so they have it in with them in their unit. Right. Captain, you know, in my building, we have two stairwells, and one is enclosed, and the other one is, you know, it's open to the air. What if we tell the people if you have ambulatory problems or you broke a leg and you can't make it down the steps for some reason, you get to the stairwell that's open to the air and wait there for somebody to come rescue you. So that's a good thing to tell them. If you, if you're going to, if you can make it to the stairwell. If you go to the one that's open that's, if remember I told you about sheltering in place and smoke will come around or come up and so you're still if you're going to wait there you still might be in smoke in the open air one. If you're going to wait at the stairwell landing. I think you should go to the one that's enclosed because that's designed for safe egress. Okay, so they should go to the enclosed stairwell, because it's the same reason if you left your windows and doors open to your unit and somehow smoke got in that way now you're still in the same situation. What about you know in when a building sets up their emergency evacuation, what about if they set up like a fire committee or a safety committee and set up maybe four captains, would you suggest something like that so you have somebody who's responsible for tenants on certain floors. If you have the manpower, if you have the training. That's always good that you have someone there that knows what to do. Just in case the residents didn't take a look at the plan or they don't know what to do. It's always good to have that but if you're going to have that you got to make sure that they know what to do. That's why you would do your annual training and, or even if you do more than once a year to get familiar with the plan or become proficient in it, and you should do it second nature if you're not going to have that. Then, if you have those floor captains or we call them floor wardens, they might be in trouble as well if they don't know what they're doing. But if you can train them. Yearly, you have a fire drill yearly and then you have a tabletop exercise in addition to that where they can talk it over and become familiar with the plan. Then that's always good like in the high rise buildings that have business in them. They have floor wardens to clear out the business or that floor. We go to those businesses and we hold floor warden training and we go over it and we tell them, okay, this is what you have to do. So do you have, do you have programs for residential buildings? Does the fire department, will they come out and talk to the building and the residents? So we've, before COVID hit, one of our jobs or one of our duties was, our office did in-person presentations on fire and life safety. And we used to go out to different buildings after hours because that's when the residents are home from work, right? So the different boards or the different AOAOs would call us when they had their meeting and we'd come in and do a presentation before they did their regular meeting. So we were more than happy to come out and talk to your residents. We do a little PowerPoint presentation and we try to answer questions. So we will come out and do that. Can you give us a phone number right now where people can call if they want to set up a meeting or have your people come out and address their residents? Can you give us a phone number? Later on, they're going to post our website. It's fire.HanaLulu.gov. And if you go to our website, there's all the information there. Okay, the website is being scrolled right now. One of the listeners, if you want a phone number for the fire department to come and talk to your residents, go to that website, fire.HanaLulu.gov. Yes. And the phone number is there, right? It's also, yeah, you can call but there's also a tab to request that presentation. Follow the request tab and you choose what you want to have us come talk to you about because we also do career days. We also do fire extinguisher training, as well as a fire and life safety training. Okay, so other than, you know, having these, you know, fire captains, I mean, four captains and, and, you know, maybe a safety committee, what other ways can buildings educate their residents so that they'll be able to evacuate a building in an emergency? So it's all going to come down to knowing what you have to do, right? Maybe you guys can have, if we don't come by, you guys can just make sure you guys talk to your residents maybe once a month, a little short safety at the beginning of your meeting and you go over the plan. We also have tip sheets, but we have a website you can go to and get tip sheets and print it out and you can put it up every month, a different one every month, right? It goes into fire safety and prevention. If we can make everybody safe and prevent fires, then you wouldn't have to worry about that evacuation part so much. So we like to go and do prevention first and then we'll go into the evacuation because it's better to just have not have a fire period, right? So every month you can put up a different tip sheet for different topics like in December we have a Christmas one for Halloween. So they can get this on the website and so they can download the information and post it on their bulletin bar. Yeah, so every month you can put a different one. There's more than 12 so you can change it out every month depending on what you want to put. One for, I think I sent you two attachments, one for high rise and one for apartment buildings, you could start with that. So every month you can put a new one on. If you go to a website, you should find the links there and if not, you just email me or there's a number on there. If you have your, your board contact us, like I said, we'd be more than happy to come out. Right now, if we can come out in person, we're more than happy to do a zoom presentation. It's pretty accessible you just got to want to have us come out and do it. Okay, you know I have some questions I told you that I had some questions from somebody who's listening to the show so since he's listening I better ask the questions. He's physically impaired or unable to walk down the stairs, and this is during a fire drill. Can they use the elevator, even though it's not a fire it's a fire drill should can they use the elevator. So, the thing about that if you're going to use that people going to do. Because a real thing we think we're going to be able to use the elevator, if you cannot move to show up there in place. We don't want to go to one of this go to the covered stairwell right yeah we don't want you going to the other because you're not going to use the elevator. I don't want people thinking to use elevator during drills and then something real happens, and they're still in that mindset, oh I always use the elevator, but it's not going to be available and it's not recommended. So if you cannot during a drill, because of your mobility issues, you should shelter in place but you should know what to do when you shelter in place. Okay, and or go into the, the covered stairwell. Yes, if you if you can make it to the enclosed stairwell, and there's wait there or slowly go down because once you're in there you should be safe so you can at your leisure or at. At the speed you're you're available to do it to then you can go down down the stairs slowly. Okay, and one of the questions was that you know and they would stay in the stairwell, until they got the all clear system. So that means that the, the building managers I guess this is something that if the building managers or property managers or board members are going to this show, they got to know is that if they set up a fire drill, and one of the things options that they give their residents, if you can't make it down a stairwell no don't use the elevator shelter in place, or go to a covered stairwell, and go as far down as you can, so just as long as much as you can. How are they going to. They have to also tell the people when all clear is and usually condominiums don't have a signal. So that means that they're going to have to send the security or other staff members, you know, to either go on doors, or if they have an email a blast email for owners to check their email, or check the stairwell right to see if people are sheltering because it's not like you have an audio system that goes throughout the building to say okay all clear, or you know a signal that says all clear. Right. So, in that case, if you are going to go to the coverage stairwell. There will be people walking down and the people walking down should acknowledge that they're there and they're going down slowly and try to get their name and remember where you saw that person so if you're passing someone that's having trouble but they're taking their time going down slowly, you can get their name is when you get to the bottom you can say, by the way, Mrs so and so we passed her and she's taking her time but we saw her last on floor seven, but she's taking her time. The building managers who are watching the show to incorporate into their evacuation plan is they got it, they got to give instructions to people who are walking down the stairwell to tell the management when they get to the bottom that somebody else is in the stairwell they got to check the stairwell. So, if you go into one of the presentations we do. We also do is called fire evacuation planning assist. So, if you have a plan already or you wanted to update it, or you want to know to go over it will come out and meet with two or two other guys or your your staff, and we'll kind of see what you need, or what areas you can improve on, or what areas good. So that's also one of the choices on the request that you know we'll come out and help you work on your evacuation plan but you should have something in place already that we can build off of. That's good to know that that's really good to know because I'm sure a lot of these buildings have maybe a skeleton plan, but you know that would be really good to know that they can call the fire department to get assistance and fine tuning their evacuation plan. Yeah, go to the website and request that so you're not going to you're not going to call the fire stations that's in your area, you're going to call I'm from the community relations office and education. So we go out and we do these educational presentations because we want the community to be safe and not get to that point where you have to call the fire department. Okay, and this is the last question. Can the parking deck doors be open during the fire drill so that the elderly can be taken down to the ground floor by a vehicle. So that's all that question and that one is a little tricky like we have to come out and see it right because any evacuations be a lot of people walking, and I don't know where that egress path that they had planned is a crossing drive is a crossing the parking lot. And if you have cars moving and people walking. I don't want to have an accident or someone getting hit. If you're in a drill, you know, if you're an elderly person that has again hard time moving. Don't just go down slowly, don't have to go all the way down to the ground floor, because if you start having moving a lot of moving parts. I don't want people to get hit. I want to come out and see your plan and see what the situation is I kind of make a blanket statement about that one I want to come out and see what it is. Before I say okay you can do that. Right and then cause more trouble. And, you know, and, you know, I guess, you know, the good part of this show is, besides the fact that you answered all these questions, as you've given the buildings a resource so they now they can call the fire department, you will come out, help them with an emergency evacuation plan, you will come out and address the residents and talk to them about what they can do. And what I think I hear from you is that everybody's got to have a plan. If you don't have a plan now, you have to have a plan, and especially, I think most buildings know about the list of vulnerables and so I think, you know, but you've given us some additional information. And I heard about the, the two binders, and you know, and to have one ready with the site manager and the other one. Where did you say it should be by the, you should put it where it's easily seen by the enunciator panel, your entire panel. Okay. And we've kind of run out of time so I thank you very much captain for being my guests on the show. And, and we've, this is a YouTube show so you know, it's going to be available for people to watch over and over again if they want to. And so, hopefully they will, and they will, you know, use this information that you've provided them so that they will be safe in their homes and thank you so much for being with us and on behalf of the speaker of the house. Let me tell you, he's very grateful to the fire department for coming as such short notice to help his constituents with with a concern that they had. Thank you very much captain. No problem. Thank you for having us. You guys have a great day we just want to be safe. Okay, and thank you for all of you for joining us for this condo insider show, and please join us next week. We're Richard Emory will be your host for another episode of condo insider Mahalo and Aloha.