Personal high rise evacuation apparatus

Abstract

This invention relates to an improved apparatus for one person to use in effecting an escape from a tall building or the like under emergency conditions, such apparatus including a novel load-lowering device in the form of a small cylindrical drum having generally teardrop-shaped apertured endplates on both ends thereof and an eye projecting therebeneath for attachment of a load-carrying sling. The elongate portions of the teardrop-shaped endplates are vertically aligned and project beyond the surface of the drum, such projections containing the apertures. A rope is threaded onto the load-lowering device by first being passed up and in through the aperture in the lower endplate, then wrapped three or four turns around the drum before finally being passed up and out through the aperture in the upper one or vice versa. The aperture in the upper endplate is essentially circular and sized to loosely receive the rope while the one in the lower endplate includes a similarly shaped portion merged on at least one side with a tapered slot having a width at the entrance thereto approximating the thickness of the rope and tapering to a relatively narrower dimension near its remote or blind end, such slot cooperating with the turns of rope wrapped in the proper direction around the drum to define a self-actuating brake automatically operative under load to control continued downward movement of the latter to a preselected safe rate when the end of the rope hanging beneath the load-lowering device is released and allowed to run free. In the manually-controlled descent mode as opposed to the previously-described self-braked mode, the operator need only grasp and move the free-hanging untensioned end of the rope along the tapered slot to vary the rate of descent or stop it altogether by tensioning and holding it into the blind end where it is the narrowest.