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Emergency, by definition, a sudden and unexpected event. It can take many forms... on a large or small scale. In any case, the effects can be catastrophic... unless you plan, unless you expect the unexpected. The main obstacle to emergency planning is apathy. The belief that fires or chemical spills or accidents only happen to others. But many organizations have recognized the advantages of emergency planning and the dangers of apathy. Dr. Russell Dynes is codirector of the Disaster Research Centre at University of Delaware. Since 1964, he's studied how people behave during emergencies. The way to overcome apathy,he says, is to develop an emergency consciousness in the workplace. So, I think the first step is simply to point someone or some group of people to start thinking about the matter as a part of their occupational responsibility, not something which is tangential and trivial to the organization but is central to it. Firefighters are on the frontlines in nearly all emergencies. They deal firsthand with the dangers of emergency events and their consequences. To them the case for emergency planning is open and shut. Archie Steacey has been a firefighter for more than 30 years. Before retiring in 1989, he was the fire chief for the District of North Vancouver. It's most important to develop an emergency plan that provides for the safety of the employees and the protection of the property and down the line in terms of the environment, which is really important today. Jim LaMorte is an emergency planning consultant in Victoria. He describes an emergency plan as a guide that provides quick answers in a crisis. It's something that you can pull off the shelf and say, "Okay, I wanna solve this problem. How do I do it, who do I contact, what equipment do they have or do I need, and what kind of activity should take place?" Lance Olmstead is the emergency planner for the Municipality of Saanich and a consultant to industry and government. In his view, a plan should be a flexible series of activities that employees can perfect through trial runs. You can practise it. You can look at it and see if it's logical. You can see whether it's achievable. If it isn't, you can modify it. And you can get it, so that it is effective when you actually have a disaster. And that's what's important if you are to save people. Bob Janssen is a field officer with the Workers' Compensation Board. He works with companies in developing safety programs. When you have a safety program in place at a workplace and it's effective and well-executed and well-managed, and workers are involved in it and workers are part of the system, when an emergency happens, it can be dealt within a controlled manner. Planning begins by looking at the kinds of events that can threaten you, a process called hazard analysis. Jim LaMorte. Well, there's probably the big three, and that's fire, theft and chemical spills. Those are the biggest ones that happen in industry in general. There's some other major ones of concern especially on the West Coast, an earthquake, and if you're close to a river or flood zone. You can even be flooded out through municipal water system if there happens to be a major break in it and the water can enter the basement and ruin equipment, etc. So, flood is a serious concern. Once hazards to an organization are identified, a response can be planned. A key element in effective emergency planning is known as hazard reduction or mitigation. It's benefits can be measured in saved lives, reduced injuries, and lessened property damage. Many community agencies offer guidance on hazard reduction. For example, the Workers' Compensation Board can help in establishing a Workplace Hazardous Materials Safety Program. Well, an employer may...has already probably put in place a WHMIS program, we can come in and help him streamline the program, look for inconsistencies, deficiencies and the like. So, we can look at...assess a situation. We may do a walk-through of the location, the plant itself, look at the chemicals in use, and then we'll asses their files of information, their Material Safety Data Sheets, look at how they label things and look at how all that information is applied to the workers. Firefighters can also be consulted. Along with fire safety training, they advise businesses on topics like safe storage and handling of chemicals. They can determine if there is a danger of toxic gas release should chemicals accidentally mix and demonstrate the safe use of breathing apparatus. Okay, what we've got here is the Scott Air-Pak, and this is for use basically in any place, where you'd be in a confined space or any place where you might have some toxic gas that you want to protect yourself from so you didn't have to... Hazard reduction includes many different activities. For example, backing up copies of vital business records, ventilation control to remove hazardous vapors, or locating shutoff valves for gas and water, to name a few. Simply put, hazard reduction is an exercise in problem solving. Some solutions are surprisingly inventive, where a small investment of time and money can result in large savings if an emergency occurs. Take a computer sitting on the edge of a desk. Lance Olmstead recommends anchoring it with an inexpensive anti skid pad that can be bought at a marine supply store. The benefit of putting that underneath means that if there is an earthquake, it's not gonna fall off the table. 'Cause if it falls off the table, you are not only gonna have to buy a new one when you can get one because everybody else's will have fallen off at the same time if it's an earthquake, are you able to conduct your business without having a computer system? Hazard analysis and reduction lead directly to action. What should people within your organization do during a crisis? Dr. Russell Dynes says the answers are revealed by imagining what could happen in specific circumstances. What things might be needed? How do we deal with particular types of problems? If we're gonna have an evacuation, how do we handle it? If we're gonna need sheltering for people, how are we going to be handling it? An effective safety training program will help provide employees with the skills needed during an emergency. In fact, an emergency plan is incomplete without that training according to Lance Olmstead. How can you possibly deal with a major incident, where people will be injured, if you don't have a First Aid course, if you don't have CPR. if you don't have search-and-rescue skills? Experience has shown that if employees are trained to handle a major emergency, they'll also be prepared for the workplace accidents that are more likely to happen. Jim LaMorte. A person cuts his leg and you've got somebody right there who knows first aid treatment and can minimize the damage, minimize the injury so that person heals quicker and gets back on the job quicker, so you have less downtime for that personnel. Also, there's an added benefit of confidence among the workers. If they have some training in emergency response, they definitely get the impression that management cares about their health and well-being. But an emergency plan is only words on paper until it's been tested. Chief Archie Steacey. The testing of an emergency plan is a key element to the success of an emergency. If an emergency occurs in your plant and employees aren't familiar with the emergency plan of that particular agency, then it probably won't work, likely won't work. Testing an emergency plan can cover a wide variety of activities. The simplest is a paper exercise where members of the emergency team go over a scenario outlined in the plan, reminding themselves of their responsibilities. siren sounds A more complex test is a full-blown evacuation drill with all employees involved. This enables them to become familiar with the procedures laid out in the plan. All personnel report to evacuation... An example of how testing a plan can pay off is the case of the First Interstate Bank of California. In 1988, its 62-story headquarters in downtown Los Angeles was struck by a catastrophic fire. It burned for more than four hours, destroyed five floors, and caused more than $50 million worth of damage, the worst high-rise fire in the city's history. But the bank's emergency plan was in place and had been tested just three weeks before. As a result, less than an hour after the fire began, key decision makers were at work in the bank's Emergency Operation Center or EOC as it's known. Elaine Kissil, the bank's manager for emergency planning, credits the test for the bank's smooth response and recovery. We had our exercise and knew where to go and what to do and what their role was. And there was no turf battles, no inner fighting. It just worked perfectly well. Then we had the recovery phase, which was, you know, took months to orchestrate. And so, the Business Resumption Planning unit, which is a different unit from my unit... Mine is called Emergency Planning. There is this Business Resumption Planning. They took over the EOC, utilizing the same concept of gathering information, setting priorities, and beginning to solve problems. They utilized the EOC for approximately six weeks on a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week basis in order to get things back to working conditions. If the plan hadn't existed, you know, we would have probably had a lot more chaotic kind of activity going on. People would not have gathered themselves together in an EOC. They would have been doing their own thing separately in their own office environment, trying to solve problems without knowing what the big picture was. And I'm sure that we would not have been able to get ourselves back up and running in a time and manner that we did. You know, we even made money the next day. How does a smaller organization, with its own specific needs, handle emergency planning? Metro-McNair Laboratories has 52 labs and offices in British Columbia. Its 400 employees routinely work with hazards like dangerous chemicals and medical specimens. As well, lab personnel are responsible for the handling of confidential records. As Operations Manager Diane Chervinski explains, the first step for the lab's emergency planning group was to set priorities. Well, our top priority was the safety of our employees. That was number 1 on the list. After that, we looked at recovery of operations and a complete restart, if that was necessary. The planning group gathered information and advice from community resources like the Workers' Compensation Board, BC Hydro, police, fire and other municipal departments. They learned that they needed to look beyond the safety program already in place. Well, on an ongoing basis, we have a fully integrated safety program, and that handles chemical spills, evacuation procedures in case of fire, that sort of thing. When we looked at it from the point of view of disaster, we were looking at a much broader picture, anything from any kind of natural disaster, right up to employees being ill from the flu, or a postal strike, anything of that nature. We have two manuals, one for our central lab location, which does not handle patients, and another one for our branch locations. The branch locations have included things like what... from the local police departments, how to look at a robbery suspect and remember what his features were like, or her features were like. We have in the book a quick reference guide, so that people can quickly go down a table of contents to look for the kind of emergency that they may be in. We also have included a checklist-style action plan for any manager or supervisor or person who is first on the scene, so that they can quickly run through all the things that they're supposed to do, which you can't always remember when you're in a middle of a stressful situation. Nearly all businesses are protected by insurance, but without an emergency plan, insurance alone won't necessarily provide complete protection. Jim LaMorte. You think your buildings or your equipment are costly and valuable. The people are the mainstay of any kind of business. And if you injure, especially key personnel and maybe somebody who is not paid that much but they know the computer system inside and out... If you lose that person, you're in serious trouble. Emergency planning will certainly cost time and money. And although an emergency is rare, when it occurs, a plan provides the advantage that can save lives, maintain jobs, and help prevent business failure. But on a day-to-day basis, an effective emergency plan provides something that's difficult to put a price on: security. From the point of view of the employees, if there was an incident that occurred, if the company were able to restart relatively quickly, I would think that the security of the paycheque is a good motivating factor. The other type of security is more of humanitarian, feeling that as a business, as an institution, we are responsible not only to the general public but especially to our workers, to our workforce, to our employees. They rely upon us to develop a safe environment to work in, and we have a moral responsibility to do that.