Any firefighter will know that safely evacuating people out of a highrise building is one of the greatest challenges in the profession. In some cases rescue teams will use the emergency stairs, but according to Paul Monks , their use is not without problems – a person with peak physical fitness will take a surprisingly long time to get out; increasingly, obesity and a sedentary life style render some people incapable of getting out. “Another issue is that when stairwells are used for evacuation, even the pressurised ones will fill up with smoke, because of the natural behaviour of the gases.

Therefore, people on the highest levels of a building are very much at risk of death by smoke asphyxiation,” he explains.

However, Monks is convinced that he has come up with a solution that makes it possible to evacuate between 300 and 600 people per hour, using a single LifeSlide installation. The idea behind LifeSlide was born when Monks was watching a BBC educational programme about Michael Farraday’s principles of magnetics shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and suddenly realised that by using simple eddy current brakes, there would be a way of exiting out of highrise buildings. Eddy current brakes decelerate an object by converting kinetic energy into heat or electricity through electromagnetic induction.

Although Monks had the idea in 2001, he did not start the physical development of the system until last year when sufficient venture capital was raised to contract NPK Industrial Design to undertake the engineering development. At this moment in time, the company has developed a ten-metre high working scale model, to prove that the system works. “The first manifestation will be a permanently attached version mounted on the outside of a highrise building. We envisage a mobile version for fire and rescue workers evacuating midrise buildings, but we are currently not sure how high is technically feasible for mobile versions. On the permanent version we are confident that we can get people down from virtually any height.”

In the event of a fire, evacuees put on a special life vest (as would be the case on a ship or in an aeroplane) and follow the directions to a LifeSlide exit where they are secured to a carriage that is fed onto the system. Once a person has entered the system, there is no going back. Lifeslide is a one-way system that enables a continuous feed of people moving down and ultimately exiting from the LifeSlide system at about one metre per second, approximately normal walking speed. The person is held in a sitting position to provide comfortable support while ensuring that neither their limbs nor loose hair or clothing can contact the building. When the carriage reaches ground level it releases the evacuee’s legs just before they exit the system, so they land on their feet.

The scale model that the company is currently working with is a 50 per cent scale by linear dimension, too small to try out with a real person. However, the model used, nicknamed Baby James, is a small wooden dummy, which emulates a 150 kg full-sized adult. This makes it possible to measure the rate of descent and deceleration very accurately. The company is aiming for is a system with a constant rate of descent, which is weight adjustable, so that there is no chance for a heavy adult coming down and colliding with a small child.

Monks believes that the Lifeslide is very intuitive for the users. “The life vest that evacuees have to put on is very much like an item of clothing. We have deliberately designed it this way, so it feels natural to people who haven’t had any training.”

On the sideline the company is also working on a stretcher attachment, for evacuating injured people from buildings and other high structures such as oil platforms, which has already generated interest from the industry.

Although, it will take NPK Industrial Design approximately another two years to complete the development in full, RVES Holding is trying to get the word out early, and welcomes any input or thoughts that relevant professionals might have. So, if you would like to know more about this ingenious system, e-mail the editorial team, at am.knegt@hisdorset.com.

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