What real disasters teach us about getting everyone out.
Every one of these stories ends the same way: the people who couldn't take the stairs were the ones a plan forgot. We tell them carefully, from the primary record, so the next building doesn't repeat them. No pitch. Just the lesson, and what to do about it.
- Compliance
California requires an evacuation chair at every stairwell
Health and Safety Code §1569.695 has required every residential care facility for the elderly to keep an evacuation chair at each stairwell since July 1, 2019. It is a flat requirement, not a plan, and it is separate from the emergency-plan language in the same section.
RCFE & Assisted LivingSep 15, 2026
· 6 min - Preparedness
Go-bag vs. bug-out bag vs. 72-hour kit: what the names mean, and which one you actually need
Go-bag, bug-out bag, BOB, 72-hour kit, get-home bag, vehicle kit, shelter-in-place kit. Some of those are the same thing wearing a different name. Some are genuinely different jobs. Here is the decoder, the side-by-side comparison, what belongs in each — and what the actual standards say, because none of them is 72 hours.
Families & HouseholdsAug 24, 2026
· 11 min - Compliance
California SB 435: the RCFE backup-power bill that didn't pass — and what the law already requires
Correction, September 11, 2026: an earlier version of this article said SB 435 was law. It is not — the bill was held in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on August 13, 2026. Here's what it would have done, and what California already requires of every RCFE.
RCFE & Assisted LivingAug 10, 2026
· 4 min - Case Study
215 patients, no elevators: the hospital evacuation that went right
When Sandy flooded NYU Langone and the backup generators failed, staff carried roughly 215 patients — including critical-care adults and NICU newborns — down dark stairwells. Here's why it worked.
Healthcare & Senior LivingAug 4, 2026
· 6 min - Case Study
Four hours in a stairwell: the campus near-miss that changed UC
A UC Berkeley grad student's power wheelchair was trapped when a fire alarm shut the elevators. He waited four hours. No one was hurt — but the story changed policy across ten universities.
Universities & CampusAug 1, 2026
· 5 min - Case Study
69 floors: the 9/11 evacuation that proves preparedness works
John Abruzzo, a quadriplegic accountant, was carried down 69 floors of the North Tower on 9/11 and survived. Eight years earlier, without a chair, the same descent nearly killed him. The difference is the whole point.
Commercial FacilitiesJul 28, 2026
· 7 min - Case Study
The Station nightclub fire and the deadly math of one exit
In under six minutes, 100 people died at The Station — most of them funneling back to the single door they'd walked in through. It's the clearest lesson in crowd egress there is.
Venues & AssemblyJul 21, 2026
· 6 min - Case Study
The MGM Grand fire: the lesson every high-rise hotel still needs
On November 21, 1980, most of the 85 people who died at the MGM Grand weren't near the flames — they were on the upper floors, with smoke in the stairwells and no safe way down. Here's what it teaches hotels today.
Hotels & HospitalityJul 14, 2026
· 6 min
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