The first time the fire alarm went off in Oda Al-anizi’s high-rise apartment in Toronto, he called security but found that no one knew what to do to help him leave the building in his wheelchair.
“I just waited for the alarm to stop,” Al-anizi said.
“I felt like my life had less value. Does it mean that my life is expendable? Does it mean that an evacuation for me is less important than everybody else?”
Al-anizi has used a wheelchair since he sustained a complete spinal cord injury in a car accident involving a drunk driver when he was 11.
The next time the alarm sounded, Al-anizi said he waited 40 minutes trying to reach building security before firefighters helped him evacuate with an evacuation chair — which can smoothly descend a stairway. The experiences inspired one of Al-anizi’s disability-related comics that he shares on his Instagram.
“Many people …