Route design means planning a way out from every sleeping place in the building through the site to a safe location, with at least a primary, an alternate and an emergency route that leave in different directions. Draw each on a hand-made map with distances and times for day and night, mark landmarks you cannot miss, and have every member of the household walk each route at least twice.
Part of Escape Route Planning
Route design is the planning of paths for leaving a building, a site and an area under threat, covering their number, direction, terrain, timing and the records that let a frightened group follow them.
A Route Begins At The Bed, Not At The Fence
The parent article starts at the perimeter: a primary route, an alternate in a completely different direction, and a last-resort emergency route, because a threat from one direction blocks every route that goes that way. That is the right frame for the site. The route also begins inside the building. In a fire, which is among the parent’s own immediate triggers, the first minute is spent leaving the room, then the building, then reaching a muster point. A route plan that starts at the gate misses the part where most of the risk is. The phase-0 article on escape routes adds that an escape route should lead to a specific safe place and follow obvious features that can be followed under stress: Escape Routes.
Three articles in this group deal with the choices that make up a route: Primary and Alternate Routes, Terrain Selection and Distance and Timing.
What You Need
- A sketch map of the building, the site and the surroundings. See Sketch Mapping.
- A pace-counted or timed walk of every route.
- Landmarks that are distinctive and permanent.
- People to walk it: everyone, including children old enough to walk.
- Copies of the map in each go-bag.
Method: Map It, Time It, Walk It
Step 1: Start inside. From each sleeping place, mark the way to two exits. Check that each opens from inside without a key.
Step 2: Draw the site routes. For each of the three, record the six items from the parent article: the start point, the distance and travel time (on foot with full packs, in daylight and at night), key waypoints, hazards, cache locations and rally points.
Step 3: Choose waypoints you cannot miss. “The large dead oak at the stream junction”, not “the third trail on the left.”
Step 4: Check the three diverge. Look at the compass bearings: if two routes leave in the same direction, one threat blocks both. See Primary and Alternate Routes.
Step 5: Walk every route twice, once by day and once at night. Note what was harder than the map said.
Step 6: Redraw and copy. Keep copies in every go-bag. The parent article warns that under stress people forget what they know perfectly well.
Common Mistakes
- Planning for the bag, not the person. A route a child or an elder cannot walk is not a route. Time the slowest member.
- Using the major road. The parent article says major roads are the likeliest to be blocked or watched.
- One walk in daylight. Night is the likeliest time and the hardest.
- A route that depends on a gate you lock. Keep the way out open from inside.
Safety
Walking routes at night injures people
A rehearsal at night over rough ground produces sprains and falls. Walk it first at dusk, carry a light that does not wreck night vision, do not run, and set a rope or knotted cord as a handline on steep or broken sections. Do not rehearse near a flooded stream, an unstable slope or a frozen pond.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Primary and Alternate Routes — how to make the routes truly different
- Combine with: Route Planning — the four questions before any journey