Never seen one of these before. Wouldn't you know it, last night watching the tube, there was a show about US beaches. They trotted out some movies of Venice Beach before LA annexed and ruined it,(like everything else), and there in the background was exactly one of these helter skelters!!

IotD does it again!

In japan, I worked in a building that had something like one of these. It sits in a big box bolted down inside the window, in an emergency you open the window, hurl the tube out, and slide down.

This one is from Korea. It is mounted to the firetruck platform but the principle is the same. I guess with a bit of extra length and some maypole dancing you could make a good helter skelter from it.

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I'd seen films of those cloth escape tubes. Do you have to go one at a time, or can it hold multiple people? Like links of a sausage.

Well they never let me go on it so I can't say, but I think it would have to be one at a time.
On the other hand, this was Japan, so they are probably pushed down in a solid mass that takes on self-organising structures as it goes and automatically directs itself to the officially designated assembly area.

On this particular elementary school, they are permanent and hard-sided, just like a playground slide. I think there must be a grate and lock system at the bottom to keep people from climbing up it the wrong direction.

But they are probably sized for Japanese people, not you big Australians. Wouldn't that be embarrassing?


I wonder if you would have flashbacks to being born.

Not unless they cut a big hole on the top and yanked me out that way.