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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • We have a different brand, but otherwise comparable. During our training and practice, we did a few runs with volunteers and also with the colleague who was wheelchair bound. While it does feel a bit weird the first time, it doesn’t feel unsafe to sit in, and also when operating it, you feel like in control without too much effort.

    During our evacuations, everybody remains calm, and everything remains orderly and coordinated. I have to admit we never had an evacuation with fire and smoke near the people, but with the early warnings we get, that’s unlikely to happen. The building was designed with good compartmentalisation, so even when there’s a fire, the smoke shouldn’t spread too far.


  • In my workplace, there are a few options: When a disabled person is on a certain floor above ground floor, there will be a special chair they can be put in, that allows one person to maneuver them down the fire escape. Multiple people in the company are trained on the use of this contraption and are notified before the evacuation is necessary.

    When there are more wheelchair bound people in the building than there are evacuation chairs available, they’ll have to be taken to the fire escape behind double fireproof doors, where the area is pressurized with clean air. There the firemen will evacuate them.

    A third option is the area where the elevators are. It closes automatically and has a fireproof door where you can wait in front of the elevators for the firemen to evacuate you using the elevators (or otherwise).

    Normally there aren’t that many wheelchair bound people in the building that need those chairs, because visitors are normally confined to the ground floor. On a floor where a disabled person used to work (now retired), one of those chairs was permanently available.

    Edit: the ones we have resemble these https://evac-chair.com/











  • If you move to the EU, not only your skillset will determine how easily you can find a decent job, but also how well your diploma translates to the ones we have here. My guess is that for technologically or scientifically oriented degrees, that’s probably not too much of an issue, on the condition that the level of education for the degree you have in your country of origin is good enough.

    If you’re seriously considering this, I’d suggest finding some people who made the same decision and talk to them about their experience.

    The EU has its own problems of course, but I have the feeling there’s generally less inequality than in a lot of other first world countries. Access to good education and healthcare is generally cheap or at least affordable. Some countries cope with waiting lists for specialized healthcare however, although that differs from country to country.

    As a Canadian, the language shouldn’t be an issue. In large parts of Europe, you can get by with French and English. In a larger, multilingual company, people usually default to English. I know a Syrian family who fled the war with their kids (the youngest wasaround the age of yours), and the kids learned the language (Dutch) very quickly and did well in school, moving on to university education. The parents had a harder time adjusting, since their degrees weren’t very compatible, but also the language remained an obstacle for them.