By Paul Silverfarb
Sentinel Editor
The Needs Clearing House is looking to make life easier for a member of the community who uses a wheelchair.
Needs Clearing House, a public charity that helps individuals in need, wants to purchase a 14-foot portable aluminum wheel chair ramp for the woman, who can’t enter or exit her home without great difficulty.
“It’s really important,” said Needs Clearing House President Joseph Kaliko. “One of the things I am really concerned about is, not only the convenience for the ingress and egress to the home, but I am really concerned for the people that could be trapped if there was a fire or other emergency. Or even if they need to go to a doctor.”
The estimated cost for the 14-foot portable ramp is around $1,400.
“When you have a person, plus a wheelchair, plus someone pushing them or even if it’s a power chair, you have quite a bit of weight,” Kaliko said. “It’s very difficult for people to handle a set of stairs where they need to take people in and out or themselves going in and out.”
With the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became a law in 1990, you can’t just put up any old aluminum ramp.
For commercial establishments, like restaurants, the ramp can go up on an incline once inch per foot. If the establishment has to overcome 34 inches, they need a 34-foot-long ramp. That means the ramp would have to have several turns to cover that much distance.
For a home, the ramp is allowed to be a little steeper: it can incline two inches per foot. Using that same 34-foot example for commercial use, a home would only need a 17-foot ramp.
“When I was talking to people about the ramp, they were wondering why we needed such a big ramp and it’s because of the ADA requirement,” Kaliko said. “They originally thought they would be able to handle the project with a six-foot ramp, but they had no idea that the person would possibly injure themselves going up and down such a short ramp with such an incline.”
The home where the ramp will be installed has five steps measuring about three feet in height. The woman who is looking for a ramp currently uses a heavy power wheelchair, and it’s difficult to get the chair in and out of the house.
“If the chair is unoccupied and someone is just pushing up a wheelchair or rolling one down, you can get away with three inches per foot,” Kaliko said. “It’s great to get the chair up and down, but you still have to deal with carrying the person.”
Through the generosity of people throughout the town, Kaliko said that he’s hoping that the ramp will be funded by this weekend or early next week at the latest. Once funded, Kaliko added that he’s hopeful the ramp will be installed within the next three weeks.
To donate to this project and help Needs Clearing House reach its goal of $1,400, visit TheNeedsClearingHouse.org and click on the donate tab on the top of the page. People can also send money via check to NCH, 233-9 Millbank Ave., Greenwich, CT 06830.
If the ramp project has been funded, any of the leftover donations will go toward any of the other projects Needs Clearing House is currently helping out.
“Most of the time we start a project and there’s really great generosity,” Kaliko said. “Ramps and wheelchairs are the ones we get frequently, but there are people in need of clothing, handicap vans and much more. We work towards filling up the hole with any of the projects that we have. We always have something going on and there’s never a shortage of need.”
