Confronting the challenges of evacuating people with disabilities

In any disaster planned for by emergency management personnel, one in five people encountered will have a disability of some type. And according to Margareta Wahlström, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, people with disabilities experience a disproportionately high level of disaster-related injury and death because their needs are neglected by the official planning process in most situations.

In an article of the Emergency Management magazine Deborah Hayes has collected the most important advice to emergency managers to plan for the evacuation needs of disabled persons.