As I was ascending, and later descending, a spiral staircase in a castle I reflected first on how steep and narrow they often were. Only on the outer side is there much room for a foot. The railings are not always that helpful, the treads sometimes slant downward, the natural light is bad. It would be tough to navigate these at speed in an emergency. Especially, I thought, they would be tough on a 70-year-old man. What with battle wounds and poor medical care, gaits and stabilising would be impaired, and this would not improve with age. Why, ...
Oh. Right. They didn't have many 70-year old men. Nothing in a castle was designed with them in mind.
They can be beautiful, but another thing nobody thinks about is that you cannot navigate a stretcher through them. If you have a stroke or a heart attack up there, rescuers will have to spend extra time developing a system for getting you to a place where they can load you on the stretcher for transport on an ambulance. When time is most crucial, they steal it.
ReplyDeleteOften I’ve just lifted and carried patients down, but for some larger patients (or smaller rescuers) that’s not an option. We have lifting chairs for regular staircases that might work on some designs, but others are too narrow. So sometimes we have to send them out a window, perhaps on a rope system we have to build on the spot, then unrig from them on the ground before they can go in the stretcher. It can take quite a while, and stroke patients don’t have the time.