Emergency Preparedness – Who, Us?

In the last year, weather-related and other emergency events caused millions of dollars in damage to facilities and, in a few instances, caught the victims by surprise. In other cases, the insurance carried by those facilities covered not only the damage, but the evacuation of their residents and housing at alternate sites – even when the anticipated calamity did not come to pass.

How prepared are you for such a potential catastrophe? Have you developed a comprehensive Emergency Preparedness Plan, so that you are prepared for such an eventuality?

Creating such a plan may seem at first to be an overwhelming task. A comprehensive plan is a series of documents, tasks, teams, training exercises and drills – and how sophisticated it is depends on the nature and size of your facility. But if you tackle the component parts one at a time, and in a logical order, you can end up with a working plan.

So…what’s the process? Here are some ideas:

A. Getting started – Create a written plan and appoint a coordinator and planning team

B. Assessment Planning – Conduct a hazard and risk evaluation and impact analysis. Assess and inventory capabilities and resources.

C. Creating the EPP – Appoint an EPP coordinator and team, develop a command center, communications systems and methods, establish relationship with community organizations that might assist, establish mutual aid agreements with facilities similar to yours, plan for life safety: establish evacuation plans and routes, ensure the safety of residents and employees, vital records and physical assets.

D. Putting your EPP into Action - Appoint an Emergency Response coordinator and team, and establish the procedures to carry out the policies and procedures you have established.

E. Resuming operations – Appoint a recovery coordinator and team, conduct pre-emergency recovery analysis and planning (set your priorities), and establish policies and procedures to conduct damage assessments, salvage operations, recovery communications and provide support.

F. Training and Testing your Plan – Conduct pre-training analysis and planning to prioritize what you will need. Establish procedures for employee training, training schedules, tests and drills, orientation and education sessions for staff and residents, tabletop exercises, walk-through drills, functional drills, evacuation drills, and full scale exercises. Develop means of documenting.

G. Maintaining your Plan – Conduct a formal audit of your EPP at least yearly, so you can: 1) identify what needs to be updated, 2) determine completeness; 3) assess chain of command, 4) evaluate staff knowledge and awareness, 5) assess trigger mechanisms, 6) evaluate inventory resources. Update your plan whenever there are: 1) new EPP members, 2) new services or operations, 3) new or renovated buildings or changes in layout of operations, 4) changes with outside agencies, new vendors, etc.