After discussing the tools currently available to a deaf person in an emergency, let’s move on to the case of blind people. In Italy, it is estimated that there are 1.8 million severely visually impaired people (UICI data), of whom 350,000 are completely blind. This article also follows the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) call launched on February 14 to member states for the “full inclusion of people with disabilities and their leaders in the development and implementation of national and local disaster risk reduction strategies.”

The experience of Uici
“There’s no module for blind people in emergencies; there are a series of experiences and exercises, but it’s certainly a commitment that we, as UICI, the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired, are carrying out,” says Giorgio Ricci, representative of the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired. Among the objectives the association would like to achieve is the training of both blind people and rescuers and in all the places that people with blindness frequent “especially in high-risk, highly seismic-prone areas.” UICI’s idea is to begin raising awareness among civil protection workers, starting with local figures, from regional coordination to provincial and municipal coordination, illustrating the specifics of blind rescue.

Exercise with Prociv Toscana
A project has already been launched, for example, in Tuscany, where the Regional Department of Civil Protection itself has requested reinvestment of funds donated by UICI to the Region for projects on emergency inclusion. This desire gave rise to the idea of working on “managing the post-emergency period, giving dignity to the blind person and offering them dignity within civil protection camps,” Ricci explains.

The UICI then purchased the sticks with Letismart-voice radar and wired the key points of the Pistoia camp of the Tuscan civil protection, and therefore the acceptance, entry, exit, bathrooms for men and women, kitchen, etc. Once the module was made accessible to the blind, an exercise was organized which involved on June 12, 2021, during the pandemic, three volunteer representatives from each Tuscan province (CRI, Misericordie and Anpas), the Fire Brigade and about ten blind people. At this point, the couples made up of blindfolded volunteers and blind people acting as tutors walked the field with the Letismart stick. “When you approach the kitchen, the stick first makes an approaching sound, the closer you get, the louder it sounds, and then a voice explains that you are in the kitchen,” Ricci explains. A two-way awareness work: from workers to the inclusiveness and needs of the blind and on the other side of the same blind people who have learned how to experience an emergency. At the end of the exercise, the volunteers “amazed at the mobility and autonomy skills that a person can often have,” says the Uici representative. And even for the blind, taking a course on the earthquake emergency was a discovery of topics that are not often covered today and that many of them had never reflected on.

Prospects
The objectives for the future are therefore to continue on the path of training civil protection workers at the local level and to create courses on the use of the AED for the blind. Until now, UICI has organized courses on BLSD, the acronym for Basic Life Support Defibrillation, or first aid maneuvers using a defibrillator, in Florence and Versilia. Finally, Ricci concludes: “We would like to encourage the implementation of the safety and security measures for people with disabilities established by Law 81/08.” We are currently working with the Red Cross to house blind people affected by the war in Ukraine (in total there are 170 thousand blind people in the country). In Italy, there are already more than 100 places between North and South made available by the Italian Blind Union.

The Fire Brigade Experience
“The topic of visual impairment complements that of deafness. We are in the presence of a visual impairment condition and therefore the person probably feels. “The guidelines we provide for rescue management state that in these situations, we must exploit the remaining resources rather than the lost ones,” explains Stefano Zanut, coordinator of the observatory on safety and rescue for people with special needs and deputy director of the Pordenone Fire Brigade. And then you talk to a person with a visual impairment, you approach them and introduce yourself as a rescuer and explain the situation to connect with them. In addition, a person with visual impairment who uses a cane for orientation or a guide dog may lose track of space and places in emergency conditions. “For example, take the case of earthquakes and falling debris. In this situation, the person would lose their orientation, start touching the stones with the stick and would no longer be able to move because the new environmental situation also creates the possibility of tripping and falling,” Zanut continues. At this point the rescuer must be able to accompany the person knowing how to guide them to a safe place.

“Among the indications we give is also that the blind person knows how to be guided, so he will take the rescuer’s elbow and stand a little behind him and that the rescuer will move declaring what he is doing: “let’s turn right”, “let’s make some stairs”, declaring the impediments. The blind person will conform to them,” explains Zanut. So the person will grab you on the elbow and there will be no need to pull them by the hands because they will be the person who will conform their balance position to you. Otherwise, if you pull the person, they lose their balance and are unable to govern the body. “Another thing we tell rescuers is that it will be the person himself, accustomed to moving in the dark, who will govern the movement. Many times we think we are the ones governing it, but in reality it is the blind person who leads and who uses you as an element of orientation. This is an important aspect: ensuring that the person maintains their sense of balance is the way to get to a safe place,” Zanut continues. The other aspect concerns guide dogs. The indication in this case is that you must tie the dog to the leash, not take the guide, thus giving the message to the animal that it is not up to him to guide the blind person.

The blind person in emergency
The topic of people with visual impairments is that of orientation. In public places, for example, there is the Loges system, a special flooring system that helps the blind with the cane found in the city when there are no other references for orientation. This floor orientation system, which has its own grammar, is used for example in squares and stations. “But in emergencies these methods disappear, when you have to run away in a hurry, maybe you forget your stick and it becomes a problem.

For example, if after an earthquake, emergency services said to move away from the walls, a blind person would have a very difficult time doing so, so if there is a companion, fine, but in other circumstances, if he were alone, it would be a problem. So here too we must be careful about the information we give: we must take into account that someone will have to approach walls and windows. Therefore, we need to build a suitable rescue system to ensure that blind people can respond independently and therefore move even in critical conditions, while also being supported by people who know how to accompany a blind person and connect with them,” explains the deputy director of the Pordenone Fire Brigade. There is currently no training program for blind people at the national level. However, in the labor sector, Legislative Decree 81/08, the workplace safety standard, explicitly states that the workplace must also be designed with people with disabilities in mind. Therefore, if there is a blind person in the work environment, it will be necessary to design the office according to their needs, on the one hand, and develop an emergency plan that also concerns the blind person. In addition her fellow workers will have to be trained in how to deal with her. “In the case of the blind person, the emergency signal in the office will be, for example, an acoustic signal. This also applies to schools, supermarkets, all the places a person can access. All these places must have contingency plans that consider the specific nature of each person,” Zanut specifies.

The exercises
The Fire Brigade is present every year in Barcis (PN), a small town, together with the Aniomap association, an association of trainers on orientation techniques, who help the blind person use the cane and the guide dog. Here the blind spend weeks in the summer during which they are accompanied on mountain routes. “Every year we send a team of firefighters to connect them with the people who have these needs. We teach courses on emergencies but at the same time we also learn something about the blind,” says Zanut. “We conducted accompanying tests and trained the police in this activity. After participating in the exercises, firefighters said they felt it was not them who were driving but blind people. This is also important because we always have a victim-centered view of rescue, such as: “I come and I save you.” In reality, people who experience their disabilities every day connect with the world and also find ways to live better. In emergencies, these conditions emerge,” concludes Zanut. The last exercise held in chronological order dates back to February 17th in Messina. In it “we hypothesized a fire on board a ferry on the route between Reggio Calabria and Messina, with the need to evacuate people. The hypothesis was that the ship docked at the port and that among the people there were two in wheelchairs and one blind. The blind person was accompanied by the operators and when he arrived at the stairs on the boarding floor the rescuer stood in front of the blind person who held the handrail with one hand and leaned against the operator’s back with the other” the Fire Brigade reports. This ensures physical contact with rescuers and the handrail to maintain the orientation of the blind person. The exercises were then limited by Covid, the first indication in fact during the pandemic was that of distance. “When we get out of this emergency we will start doing them again and they will be open to all disabilities. In particular, contacts are underway with some facilities where people with visual impairments are present to carry out new exercises” concludes Zanut. Finally, the next meeting to discuss disability and emergency will be in Taormina on March 30th with a meeting entitled: “Let’s start again with inclusive safety: experiences compared”, organized by the Fire Brigade and the Municipality of Taormina.

by Claudia Balbi