Project Safe EV-AC, a three
year development project, will improve evacuation from buildings,
vehicles, and other settings during emergencies by providing training
materials on the EVacuation and ACcommodation of people
with disabilities. With your participation, Project Safe EV-AC materials
will be Sound, Accessible, Free,
and Effective. Project Safe EV-AC is targeting specific audiences, including
people with disabilities and emergency responders. Download
a Project
Safe EV-AC brochure. If you would like a free brochure, contact
Project Safe EV-AC.
Visit
the Project Safe EV-AC Library.
Our mission: Awareness
of and familiarity with your organization's evacuation plan is essential
in order to increase people's safety in emergency situations. In the
case of emergency evacuation, this is not enough, and additional steps
must include overcoming the tendency to avoid thinking about emergencies
and getting adequate information about emergency evacuation planning.
These two problems must be overcome.
First, people must overcome
the fear and anxiety caused by emergency planning. People tend to
avoid thinking about the possibility of an emergency occurring because
such thoughts lead to avoidance thinking. For this reason, people
often fail to develop emergency evacuation plans. Currently, there
is no effective training process for addressing this problem.
Second, people have difficulty
sorting through the voluminous amount of emergency evacuation material
and applying it efficiently. Coordination among agencies in providing
training materials is nonexistent. Many agencies distribute guides
on emergency evacuation; however, most do not integrate materials
from other agencies in a way that provides the "best of the best."
Currently, there is no cohesive set of safe evacuation "best" practices
that includes people with disabilities.
Project Safe EV-AC will
address these problems by 1) developing an effective training
program for overcoming avoidance behavior and, 2) integrating available
best safety evacuation practices into easy-to-use training materials.
In addition, Project Safe
EV-AC will include a continuous feedback process to ensure that quality
materials are developed. This process has two stages. During the second
year of the Project, safety evacuation experts will be asked to serve
on the Project's Advisory Panel. This panel will review current best
practices and assist with the integration of these practices. In the
third year of the Project, a panel of end-users (employer, building
owner, nursing home owner, etc.) will review the newly developed materials
to ensure that the materials are relevant and easy to use.
If you are an expert in
the field of safety evacuation or an end-user of safety emergency
evacuation for people with disabilities, and would like to serve on
one of these panels please contact Project Safe EV-AC.