The firefighter’s pole – now often omitted from firehouse design for safety reasons – is worthy of our consideration for a number of reasons:

1. They perform their intended function – getting a group rapidly towards its mission in readiness with little notice. In other words, firefighters don’t have to sleep in all of their uniforms, on their trucks, and can get rest when not needed. The pole has also been used in military pilots’ ready rooms for the same purpose.
2. They take up very little floor space;
3. Fire poles don’t fail during power outages, and in fact require  no energy input.
4. The fire pole was invented in the 19th century by David Kenyon, an African-American firefighter in Chicago. For a better account, see April 21, 1878: Thinking Fast, Firefighter Slides Down a Pole – by Randy Alfred on Wired.com

See also:

Fire Pole! – videos and more on Instructables.

McIntire Brassworks of Somerville, Massachusetts makes several models, and offers a safety door so that there’s no open hole for children or animals to fall through:

       Different configurations of McIntire’s Model 20

While this is clearly a technology only suited for the able-bodied with some practice, consider the evacuation of an crowded structure. Those that can descend and exit by pole, and who are not assisting others, can free up the bandwidth, so to speak, of other means of egress.