Increase of Vertical Evacuation Interval in Proportion to the Number of Stories in High-rise Buildings

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to determine whether the vertical evacuation interval, the required time for an ambulance to be dispatched after contact from a patient, increases with the number of stories above ground of a patient requesting evacuation from a high-rise building. METHODS: The rescue diary of a 119 ambulance team dispatched to Jae-Song-Dong, Busan was retrospectively reviewed for 9 months for the period from April 1 to December 31, 2006. A total of 422 cases were included as subjects in the study. Median values of the vertical evacuation intervals collected from four building story groups were evaluated and the changing trend of the vertical evacuation intervals was analyzed. RESULTS: Amang all cases, the median value of the vertical evacuation intervals and the inter-quartile range were 5.0+/-5.0 minutes. A comparison of the vertical evacuation intervals by the Kruskal-Wallis test revealed statistically significant differences between the four different story groups (p<0.001). An increase in building story number was shown to affect the vertical evacuation interval. The y-intercept was found to be 4.885, the regression coefficient was 0.133 (p<0.001), and the r-square value was 0.181. A similar result was found for patients having emergency symptoms. CONCLUSION: These results confirm that there is an increase in vertical evacuation intervals depending upon the number of stories above ground of a patients requesting emergency medical service in high-rise buildings.