Campus Readiness · Universities & Colleges

Every dorm and lecture hall has stairs. Not every student can take them.

Residence halls, labs, and lecture buildings all share one blind spot: when a fire alarm shuts the elevators down, the students, faculty, and visitors who can't take the stairs have no way out. Outpost gives your campus the equipment, the trained responders, and the documentation to close it — under ADA Title II, Section 504, and the Clery Act.

Why it matters

Three offices are already asking for this plan.

Your ADA / DAC office

Public universities have duties under ADA Title II and Section 504 to make emergency evacuation accessible — not just doorways and ramps, but getting a person out.

The State Fire Marshal

NFPA 101 and the Cal Fire Code expect a means of egress for everyone; annual drills and inspections are where the gap gets found.

Clery & risk

The Clery Act requires testing and disclosing emergency procedures, and insurers increasingly want documented evacuation capability at renewal.

The gap the codes leave

In a fire the elevators lock out — and a dorm is one of the few places the code doesn't require an area of refuge.

Locked out
Elevators are recalled and taken out of service the moment the alarm sounds — a life-safety feature that removes the only exit for anyone who can't take the stairs.
No refuge
Residence halls are one of the few high-rise occupancies where the building code doesn't require an area of refuge at the stairs. A portable evacuation-chair program is the practical fallback.
All 10
In 2024 the University of California directed all ten of its campuses to provide evacuation chairs and individualized evacuation plans. This is where enforcement is heading.
It isn't only fire. Lithium-battery fires from e-bikes and scooters — increasingly common in dorms — can block a stairwell outright, and elevators still lock out the moment any alarm sounds. The threat that traps a student is more common than ever.
What readiness looks like

A HALO chair staged at each stairwell, a ProMove sling to reach the student who can't self-transfer, trained housing and public-safety staff, and an individualized plan for every person who raised their hand — actually installed, not sitting in a queue. That readiness is the entire reason Outpost exists.

The near-miss that changed policy
Case study · UC Berkeley

Four hours in a stairwell — and the policy that followed.

In September 2023, UC Berkeley graduate student Ryan Manriquez, who uses a power wheelchair, was trapped in his second-floor campus apartment when a fire alarm shut the elevators down. He waited about four hours. He had asked the university for an evacuation chair months earlier; it hadn't been installed. The alarm was false — no one was hurt. After he testified to the Board of Regents, the University of California directed all ten campuses to provide evacuation chairs and individualized evacuation plans. A near-miss doing what tragedies usually have to.

A rare, clear look at the exact gap this program closes — the equipment was requested; the plan just hadn't caught up to the person.
Read the full case study →
What we deploy

One cabinet per stairwell. One plan for the campus.

  • HALO evacuation chairs
    Wall-mounted in a cabinet at each stairwell across residence halls, labs, and lecture buildings — Swift for most floors, Power for high-rises.
  • ProMove transfer kits
    For moving a student or staff member from a wheelchair, bed, or the floor into the chair — the dorm-room and lab transfers a chair alone can't make.
  • Responder & floor-warden training
    RAs, housing staff, EH&S, and public-safety officers train hands-on with the actual chairs and stairwells they'd use.
  • DAC / ADA-Coordinator sign-off
    An accessibility briefing and a PDF sign-off sheet so your Disability Access office can close the file on install day.
  • Signage & cabinet decals
    So the chair is found in seconds — in smoke, by a first-year RA who's never used one.
  • 12-month audit log
    Installs, trainings, drills, serials, and signatures — the record ADA Title II, the Clery Act, and your insurer expect.
Free one-pager

Get the Campus readiness flyer

The obligation, the highlights, and a stairwell-readiness checklist — on one page you can forward to your team. We'll email it now.

Free · emailed instantly · we reply from drew@outpostprep.com.
Coverage Designer · Campus Readiness

Build your coverage in 30 seconds

Set your building, pick your chairs, and watch three tiers of coverage price themselves.

Live estimate

Dorms don't require areas of refuge — a chair in every stairwell is the practical fallback your disability-services office can point to.

How many residence-hall stairwells?
2
How many floors?
3
What best fits your stairs & passengers?
Add to the plan?
Your build
2 residence-hall stairwells × 3 floors · HALO Swift
Your three tiers of coverage
Baseline
2chairs
HALO Swift
HALO Swift
One chair per stairwell — the compliance baseline.
★ Recommended
Recommended
4chairs
HALO Swift
HALO Swift
Adds coverage on your upper floors so no one waits long.
Full
6chairs
HALO Swift
HALO Swift
A chair on every floor of every stairwell — nobody waits.
We'll email your numbered estimate in seconds — no call required.

Estimate only — final counts confirmed on your walkthrough. Chairs & slings are quoted; Go-Bags and SunCase are priced online.

Tell us the campus. We'll send the spec.

One-page spec and a fixed price for your buildings — no call required.

Free · fixed-price spec · we reply from drew@outpostprep.com.