Events of recent years, including 9/11, have led to the realization that skyscrapers are potential death traps, especially for inhabitants of higher floors, in cases of catastrophic events.

In recent years we witness additional high-rise building large-scale disasters such as the fire at the 35-story Cook County Administration Building in Chicago, which killed six office workers and injured eight others in 2003; the fire at the 45-story LaSalle Bank building in Chicago, which injured 37 people, including 22 firefighter in 2004; the Windsor building fire in 2005, which destroyed the emblematic 28-story tower in the heart of Madrid's business district and the fire in a Russian office building, in 2006, in which nine people died and many others were injured after jumping from the burning building.

These tragedies, and, of course, the World Trade Center disaster, have underlined the vulnerability of the building's core and emergency stairwell as the only venue for evacuation, escape and as means of access for fire and rescue personnel. Clearly, as the US National Institution of Standards and Technology (NIST) concludes emphatically in its study of the WTC collapse, there is an acute need for alternative, back-up solutions.

Initiated in September 2002 by a group of highly experienced entrepreneurs, Escape Rescue Systems has developed an innovative system which revolutionizes the evacuation of tenants from high-rise buildings, and enables the fast and safe transportation of fire and rescue forces to the focus of an emergency. Other existing and competing solutions do not offer comparable effectiveness

In July 2004, Escape installed the first prototype system on a 21 story building in Ramat-Gan - Israel. The system has been approved for installation by the Standards Institution of Israel and by the Israeli Ministry of Labor and Welfare. This prototype is being used for testing and demonstration and it is in the process of approval as an operational system.

Both in the United States and Israel, Escape is a leader in the process of recognition and standardization of external evacuation from high-rise buildings. Indeed, Escape's CEO, Dr. Jonathan Shimshoni has been appointed as chairman of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Subcommittee on High-Rise Building External Evacuation Devices.