The core mission of emergency evacuation is straightforward: move as many people to safety as possible out of a hazard zone as quickly as conditions allow. Speed and persons rescued are the metrics. Every additional minute in a hazard zone meaningfully increases risk, and responders are trained to prioritise tempo above almost everything else. For most occupants, that framework holds but for People of Determination, many of whom rely on assistive devices, it generates a tension that standard evacuation doctrine does not adequately address and one that first responders encounter, often for the first time, in the middle of a live incident. Roughly 16% of the global population lives with a significant disability according to the World Health Organization, which means People of Determination are statistically present in every building we respond to, planning for them is a core professional responsibility. With localized evacuations becoming more commonplace across the GCC due to the current conflict this subject warrants exploration.
The Legal Framework
Before examining the operational problem, it is worth understanding the legal environment in which GCC responders operate. UAE Federal Law No. 29 of 2006 on the Rights of People of Determination guarantees the right to safety and accessibility and mandates equal protection in emergency situations. Cabinet Resolution No. 43 of 2021 extended those standards across public and private facilities. The UAE's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2010 brought CRPD Article 11 into force, placing an explicit obligation on states to take all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, to which GCC states are signatories, requires disability-inclusive approaches to be embedded across national disaster risk reduction strategies. The legal obligation to protect People of Determination during emergencies is binding.
The following exploration and recommendations are not country specific and designed instead to spark discussions and planning for evacuation of PoDs in emergency organizations across the region and even world.
While disability may impact evacuation procedures in many ways for the sake of this article we will exclusively explore the subject of assistive devices which many PoDs rely on.
Defining Assistive Devices
To understand the dilemma, a responder first needs to understand what they are looking at. Assistive devices span a wide range of categories, each with different logistical characteristics and different consequences if left behind.
Powered and manual wheelchairs are the most physically demanding category. A custom power wheelchair can weigh between 100s of kilograms and is a bespoke clinical device — configured to the individual's posture, pressure distribution, and in many cases respiratory positioning. It is not interchangeable with a standard hospital chair. Replacement timelines run to several months, with costs from tens of thousands of Dirham.
Portable oxygen concentrators and ventilators are life-sustaining equipment. They are heavy, carry handling risks in fire environments, and add significant bulk to any stairwell movement. For the person dependent on them, they are not optional.
White canes and guide dogs provide wayfinding for blind and low-vision individuals. Without either, independent navigation in an unfamiliar, chaotic evacuation environment becomes impossible.
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices serve as the functional voice of individuals who are non-speaking or have severe speech impairments. These highly individualised systems are built up over months and controlled through methods ranging from eye-gaze tracking to switch access. Losing the device on scene means the person arrives at the assembly point unable to communicate pain, report missing persons, or advocate for their own care.
Walkers, crutches, forearm crutches, and prosthetic limbs are the smallest and most portable category, yet the most frequently left behind in the urgency of stairwell movement. During an evacuation response elsewhere in the MENA region, this author observed individuals who used walkers evacuated successfully and without injury but without their assistive devices, only to wait nearly two days at a temporary shelter before a replacement walker arrived. They had been mobile and independent at the point of rescue. They were not mobile and independent for the 48 hours that followed. The walker had been left at the scene. It would have taken seconds to bring it. That gap between what was possible and what was done is precisely the kind of outcome this article is trying to prevent.
The Dilemma
The operational tension is real and should not be minimised. Stairwell design, device weight, fire or danger progression, and available personnel create genuine constraints. A heavy power wheelchair cannot descend a standard emergency stairwell without specialist evacuation equipment that may not be present. An oxygen cylinder adds weight and bulk that slows movement in ways that matter when conditions are deteriorating. The instinct to leave the device and prioritise human life over hardware is not irrational, It is what training produces and it very well may be leaving these devices behind is expedient but it warrants consideration in each scenario.
What the instinct often fails to account for is that the device and the person are not fully separable. Separating a wheelchair user from their custom chair triggers pressure injuries within hours on an unsuitable surface and, for users whose chair configuration supports chest wall expansion, compromises respiratory function. Removing an oxygen-dependent person from their equipment without a clear transition plan is a medical emergency created at the point of rescue. Leaving an AAC device behind means a non-speaking person arrives unable to communicate. In each case, the cost of the field decision does not disappear. It transfers downstream to the hospital, the rehabilitation service, and the family caregiver, accumulating there for weeks or months after the incident is closed.
At Grenfell Tower in 2017, 15 of the 37 disabled residents present that night were killed, a 41% fatality rate that far exceeded the building-wide average. At the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a quadriplegic employee was evacuated from the 69th floor by ten colleagues working in relay on an evacuation chair with no formal plan and no pre-positioned equipment. They improvised for ninety minutes and got him out. That outcome deserves admiration. The fact that it is required.
Practical Approaches
The NFPA Emergency Evacuation Planning Guide for People with Disabilities provides the most detailed international reference for device-inclusive evacuation planning. Individual emergency evacuation plans, held at building management level, should document for each Person of Determination which devices must travel with them, which routes can accommodate those devices, and which designated assistants are assigned. When crews arrive on scene, that information should be waiting. When it is not, check Areas of Rescue Assistance early and first, and ask directly of the person, not the carer beside them. As psychological first aid frameworks consistently establish, People of Determination are the foremost experts on their own bodies and their own equipment. The person in front of you knows more about what their device does, and what they can tolerate without it, than anyone else on scene.
Conclusion
This article does not set out a policy framework or a checklist. What it attempts is narrower and to map a dilemma that first responders have consistently encountered for the first time in the field, without preparation, under the worst possible conditions. It will not always be possible to evacuate an assistive device alongside its user. Evacuation route constraints , threat progression, and available personnel impose real limits, and no amount of planning eliminates every constraint. The shift being suggested here is not procedural per say but cognitive. Do not immediately discount the possibility of taking the device. The instinct to leave it in order to maintain tempo is understandable, but the cost of that decision moves downstream, accumulating across weeks of hospital care, rehabilitation, and lost independence long after the incident is closed. Taking the device or making every reasonable attempt before concluding it is impossible lightens the burden on the broader system. That calculus belongs in global training before it is needed in a burning building.
