Developed by husband and wife Marcel and Megan LeLievre, EvacMate is a new evacuation system that allows elderly residents to be evacuated in just under three minutes, compared to an average of 10 minutes.
EvacMate co-founder and director Megan LeLievre says she worked in aged care safety for 12 years, but decided to create the system after 11 residents tragically died in a fire at a NSW aged care home in 2011.
“With our system, emergency services can monitor the evacuation in real time and know which rooms to visit before they get on site, even if the building is full of smoke,” she said.
How does it work?
Sensors – which are visible up to four metres away through thick smoke – are attached to the outside of each door. When there’s a fire, the sensorsturns blue and emergency services can immediately track what’s happening in real time.
During evacuations, staff can simply tap a sensor and the colour will show emergency responders whether a room or area is cleared or needs attention.
While the system has only been piloted at an aged care facility in Brisbane, an extra $100,000 in finding just announced by the QLD Government will now allow the system to be installed into more aged care facilities.
The money will also go towards doubling the battery life of the sensor to add functions like emergency lighting, and to make the user interface multilingual for workers from non-English speaking backgrounds.
With fires at aged care facilities and retirement villages a real danger to residents and staff, anything we can do to protect them has got to be a good thing.
