Cities poorly equipped for people leaping from fires

   Fire: if a blaze breaks out while you are on the upper floor of a building, there's a chance that the stairs will be unpassable and you'll be forced to the window, standing there evaluating your options while flames lap your backside.
   What you are supposed to do is wait for a fire truck to wheel up and with a ladder and follow instructions from a friendly firefighters ushering you onto the ladder to your safety.
  However, leaping down is sometimes the only real option but fire squads, surprisingly, are not equipped to offer assistance with a necessary jump.
  Such situations are relatively rare but they do occur.
  In Montreal alone two roofers perished in Nov. 2003 on Notre Dame in St. Henri because they had no way down. A few years before prior, several people escaped a blaze at Guy and St. Antoine by leaping to their safety into the back of a sated snow truck and in the early 90s, fire hit a building at Verdun and Church where somebody tossed a mattress out the window and others jumped on it to their safety, although one person perished.
   Technology exists to help fire leapers in the form of an inflatable mat.
   You have seen variations of the device in such recent movies as Man on a Ledge and Mel Gibson also jumped on one in Lethal Weapon, but they are more fiction than fact, as three major fire squads reported to Coolopolis that they did not even have such devices.
   These mats are the more modern version of the old-time handheld trampoline-type surfaces that firefighters once held to catch jumpers.
   Those were impractical, however, as firefighters were frequently injured, suffering broken arms or dislocated shoulders with the impact of the person landing on the device. In some cases people would land on the head of the firefighter.

This solution ended up in a lot of broken arms

    A survey of Toronto, Vancouver and New York City fire squads indicated that none of them had such soft landing devices.
   A Vancouver official said that they and most other forces don't employ the mats because they are not recommended by the National Fire Protection Agency.
   High-rises usually have sprinklers, so people only rarely get stuck near a window, said the Vancouver official. If the water system was compromised, perhaps by an earthquake, it might happen, he conceded.
   Toronto Fire Captain David Eckerman confirmed that his squad does not have such a device. He took a poll in the office and nobody had seen such a thing used in the city over the last 25 years. He said that orchestrating a jump onto a mat might be fraught with peril. "It's hard enough to get people to come out onto ladders," he told Coolopolis.
   It is possible that other emergency units of these cities had the mat, but none of the three fire squads suggested any such thing.
   You will be pleased to know, however, that Montreal has about 10 Sprungpolster mats that stand 5'6", and measure 11.5 by 11.5 feet. It inflates automatically in about 30 seconds and can withstand a leap of someone from 50 feet. It weighs 120 pounds and can fit in a hockey bag.
   Operations Chief Luc Robillard says that he has seen them deployed only about five times in his 28 years on the force.
   The mats are sometimes laid beneath people who are perched to leap to their suicide.
   "They are often used to dissuade the person from jumping, they think, 'there is no point in jumping, I won't die,'" said Robillard.
   In some cases, the suicidal person will simply move to another spot, making the entire deployment of the mat futile.
   They are not encouraged in the case of a fire because there is a pretty good chance that a leaper might miss the mat, he said.
   The mats are also not particularly useful to save people perched on higher spots, such as suicide-attempters perched on the Jacques Cartier Bridge, which is something like 100 feet high, twice the height such a device is able to handle.
   Bars have been erected around the edge of that bridge, so fewer attempt to kill themselves up there than in the past, but a few still persist, according to Robillard. (14 people climbed over the barriers to leap to their deaths between 2005-2008 inclusive).
   So if you ever have to call for the fire department from an upper level unit, make sure to tell them to bring Sprungpolster, just in case.