Say your sister has severe rheumatoid arthritis and must use a wheel chair. Say there's a bomb threat at her office on the third floor of the Civic Center and everyone is evacuated — everyone except her. She's left by the stairwell for firefighters to retrieve. Only no one comes. In fear for her life, she drags herself down the stairs to safety.

Stories like this are common. There are even reports of wheelchair users being left behind in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. All of this points to a pressing need for civic and emergency disaster planning that leaves no one behind.

One such plan has surfaced at the University of Kansas. Researchers there hope the idea, called the Nobody Left Behind Project, will lead to a national model that can prevent death and injury for the disabled population in future disasters.

“This project is important because it is one of few research projects in this area that is using empirical and surveillance data to determine if people with mobility limitations are being considered when we think of disaster preparation and emergency response,” said Glen W. White, professor of applied behavioral science and director of the Research and Training Center on Independent Living, University of Kansas.

White and colleagues investigated 30 randomly selected U.S. counties, cities, parishes and boroughs where a natural or man-made disaster occurred between 1999 and 2004 to determine whether disaster plans and emergency response systems met the needs of the mobility impaired.

“The survey revealed that emergency managers still don't have a good handle on where people with disabilities are, and how do they find ways to rescue and then accommodate them when they get to a place of safety?” White said.

A number of issues exist:

• Many public buildings have escape routes inaccessible to wheelchair users;
• Few people know how to use the adaptive escape chairs for wheelchair users; and
• There is a lack of accessible transportation after a disaster.

Last April in California, the State Independent Living Council delivered a report to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger detailing the treatment of the disabled during the 2003 firestorms.

“People with disabilities were especially hard hit by these disasters,” said Mike Collins, SILC's executive director. “With approximately 19.6% of the state's population having a disability of some kind, and many of those individuals unable to evacuate themselves, see approaching danger, or hear announcements to evacuate, they are especially vulnerable to these wildfires and other natural disasters.”

For example, the notification methods used in the 2003 Southern California firestorms were haphazard at best, Collins said. In many cases local fire officials had no time to ensure that broadcast media learned of the updated evacuation needs of the affected counties. Fast-moving fires necessitated having deputies or highway patrol officers race ahead of the fires and announce the need to evacuate using the loudspeakers on their patrol cars. When reports were issued on television, they were usually not captioned.

“This impacted the deaf, who could only see pictures of the fires, not realizing they were in danger,” he said. The blind could not see pictures of the danger at all.

One remedy Collins is pushing for is a reverse-911 system, wherein officials would have the ability to call everyone in an affected area to alert them to the need to evacuate. With an enhanced-911 system, dispatchers at a central location are able to produce a list of people who might be unable to evacuate themselves in an emergency. In San Diego County, a list of local disabled persons had been distributed to all fire agencies, but the lists were locked in fire houses and during the fires no regular personnel were manning those stations.