What is an Evacuation Assembly Area?
An evacuation assembly area is a designated area that is distanced from the building for occupants to meet in the event of an emergency such as a fire or an active shooter. Assembly areas ensure that all occupants are both safe and accounted for.
Some organizations and schools will opt to mark these publicly to ensure everyone knows where to gather. On the other hand, it is becoming more common for assembly areas to be kept confidential and only shared with designated building emergency leaders. This is explained more below.
Proactive Safety
Being proactive rather than reactive when it comes to building emergencies like fires and active shooters is one of the most important tasks an organization is tasked with. One of the most important components of emergency planning is designating assembly areas for evacuation scenarios. However, there can be more to this seemingly simple task than what meets the eye.
Practical Use of Assembly Areas
Let’s look at it from the ground up. When an emergency situation arises and a building needs to be evacuated; employees, students, visitors, and other occupants need to be accounted for to make sure everyone has made it out safely. Tactically assigned assembly areas are the most effective and time-efficient way of accomplishing this imperative task.
In many cases, when creating assembly areas organizations will want to opt not to post these assembly areas on the doors/walls the way they would with an evacuation map for example. This is because an active shooter may decide to use this information to evacuate a building and use the the dense populations of assembly areas to their advantage. In many cases it is advantageous to keep assembly area maps confidential for this reason.
Partnering with Building Maps
The illustration team at Building Maps is trained in ICC/NFPA code and fire safety. We can create safe, separate and confidential assembly maps for your buildings so that your occupants are safe and your employees are prepared for active shooters, intruders, fires, etc.
Building Maps is the industry leader in creating and maintaining safety maps for organizations, businesses and schools across all industries. From fire evacuation and severe weather sheltering to security and campus mapping, we’ve got you covered.
Contact us today for a quick and free quote.
