Lauredhel had a post a few days ago noting the plight of a quadriplegic man abandoned while the ablebodied passengers were evacuated during the train breakdown on the Sydney Harbour Bridge recently and told he would be evacuated “in two or three days”. (Luckily nearby construction workers showed some initiative and rescued him using a forklift.)
Apparently this was not just a regrettable lapse or someone’s wires getting crossed about emergency procedure, it’s standard operating procedure for CityRail: CityRail’s new generation of passenger carriages have been designed with no facility for evacuating wheelchairs at all.
A CityRail spokeswoman confirmed last night wheelchair passengers would not be able to access the evacuation ramps and must wait for a stretcher in an emergency on the new public-private partnership-funded trains.
The Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Association of NSW and Spinal Cord Injuries Australia fear the system will place wheelchair passengers at greater risk than able-bodied passengers.
They are worried that disabled travellers would be forgotten in a terrorist incident like the July bombings of the London Underground.
ParaQuad spokeswoman Deborah Schofield said evacuating wheelchair passengers from the side of the train posed a problem inside tunnels.
ParaQuad has urged CityRail to direct its private sector partner, Reliance Rail – a consortium that includes Downer EDI, ABN Amro and John Holland – back to the drawing board.
“It seems at this stage RailCorp and EDI have no idea how to get wheelchair users off trains in the event of an emergency,” Ms Schofield said.
How on earth can a commuter transport company in the 21st century not make adequate provision for emergency evacuation of passengers in wheelchairs? This is people’s lives at stake, not just our society’s general casual negligence of making life unnecessarily difficult for the disabled.
Why is it that whenever I hear of public infrastructure fiascos involving incompetence wrapped up in heartlessness I am not surprised that a private-public partnership bottom line is the slimy centre of the package?
Thanks for the post, Viv. Whether or not train stations (particularly underground ones) as well as trains are easily evacuable is a big issue. A recent bomb scare at the very busy Brunswick St station in Bris showed it was not – and the State gov’t has been very slow to move on station redesign and renovation.
This is something I’m obviously very personally concerned by – as an above knee amputee, who with the best prosthetic leg in the world is still less mobile than many folks, and who may end up in a wheel chair when I’m old(er).
Perhaps CityRail were thinking the issue could be solved by loud denunciations of terrorism rather than practical action?
That must be it, Kim!
I’m also dismayed that the 000 emergency services just handed Macauley off back to Cityrail’s utterly inadequate emergency procedures, even when he told them that he needed medication urgently. That doesn’t seem to be being examined anywhere that I’ve noticed yet.
It’s a real worry, tigtog. We’ve read enough about the indifference of city folks to obvious suffering in public places (and I always think back to what happened to Aunty Delmae Burton last year after she suffered a stroke and was left unaided on a busy bus station for four hours, but there are other instances – someone who collapsed at peak hour at Brisbane Central and no one bothered to phone an ambulance or seek help) but you would hope emergency services and staff would be minimally competent to deal with… emergencies.
It hadn’t struck me until now, but considering that several someones in a CityRail uniform must have been coordinating the evacuation, why didn’t someone in a CityRail uniform stay with Macauley until he could be evacuated? Since when is it OK to leave him alone considering that They. Were. Right. There?
More disability problems.
More practical caring would be welcome for those who aren’t able bodied!
Thanks, steve.
I’m going to reproduce a comment from another blog discussion of this issue because it sums up the issues so well (the text in italics is from a comment of mine that this is responding to):
Bolded emphasis on the last line mine.
I think the “oversight” of planning for us in these situations relates to the stone age idea of “survival of the fittest”….always amuses me though because put many of us in a unique situation where we don’t have the average things most AB’s take for granted and we’re often MORE adaptable-so obviously the theory doesn’t always hold!
Wish this topic generated more buzz so that plans could be put in place.
Personally, I never leave home without my pogo stick. Comes in handy when a quick exit is called for.
Horrifying. There but for the grace of god(s), go I (instead I’m a member of the limping but walking wounded)