EMERGENCY is a serious, unexpected and often dangerous situation which possess an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation, although in some situations, mitigation may not be possible and agencies may only be able to offer palliative care for the aftermath. For an Incident to be an Emergency, it has to conform to one or more of the followings:
• Poses an immediate threat to life, health, property, or environment
• Has already caused loss of life, health detriments, property damage, or environmental damage
• has a high probability of escalating to cause immediate danger to life, health, property, or environment
WHAT IS A WORKPLACE EMERGENCY?
A workplace emergency is an unforeseen situation that threatens your employees, customers or the public. It may disrupt or shutdown your operations, it may cause physical or environmental damage. Emergencies maybe natural or manmade.
Workplaces need a plan for emergencies that can have a wider impact. Special procedures are needed for emergencies and there are many types of emergency that can happen inside or outside the workplace such as:
- Fires.
- Floods.
- Tornados.
- Earthquakes.
- Hurricanes.
- Severe weather events.
- Gas leaks.
- Chemical spills.
Emergency Action Plan
What is it? An emergency action plan is a predetermined plan for how your business will respond to
(a) getting help to an injured worker and
(b) getting all personnel to evacuate the property or seek refuge during an emergency situation.
Why Is It Important?
When an emergency strikes, every second counts. There is no time to start thinking about what has to be done, where, or by whom.
Emergency Action Plan From getting medical attention to a severely injured worker to getting all employees out of a burning building, seconds spell the difference between life and death. Having an established emergency response plan can save your property, your assets, and—most importantly—your employees.
What is required?
• Develop an emergency action plan that states specifically how the operation will respond during an emergency situation.
• Train employees on specific emergency procedures.
• Perform practice drills, and adjust the plan based on results.
How do you do it?
- Start talking the truth is, no one wants to talk about emergency situations. However, if you don’t develop a plan before you need it, your emergency response is destined to fail. The key to getting your plan off the ground is to begin the dialogue. Assemble your leadership team and ask, “What if?” Take a step at a time, considering every operation in your yard. Soon, you will get an idea of how prepared you are for a likely emergency.
- Building the plan Building an effective emergency response plan is nothing more than developing a system to communicate during an emergency and assigning responsibility to ensure certain tasks get completed.
• Internal communication. Think about your operation. How would you communicate to your entire staff that they need to evacuate? From cell phones to radios to intercoms, the possibilities are endless. The key is to use a consistent system and make sure everyone is aware of it.
• External communication. Most emergency situations require some kind of outside assistance. Develop a system that ensures that the call for help is made quickly and that the person making the call has all of the pertinent information to get the right rescue workers to the scene as soon as possible.
Internal response. What are people supposed to do? This is a very simple question that requires a complex answer. External response. The best way to get an efficient and effective response from outside rescue workers is to have a great working relationship with them prior to your needing them. Meetings, familiarization tours, and on-site drills will allow rescue workers to understand your operation
- Training The importance of making sure employees know what to do and where to go during an emergency situation cannot be stressed enough. Emergency response training should be part of your ongoing training schedule, and it must be part of your new employee orientation program. Training should at least cover alarms and notification systems, evacuation routes, and meeting spots or muster point.
- Drills Most operations will tell you there is never a good time to conduct an emergency training drill, but that shouldn’t stop you from having one. Having a drill will provide essential feedback on how in-tune everyone is with the plan.
• If a drill produces poor results, your company should require retraining and redrilling to ensure the plan truly works when needed.
• There are many emergency services protocols that apply in an emergency, which usually start with planning before an emergency occurs. One commonly used system for demonstrating the phases is
- PREPAREDNESS PHASE:
• The planning phase starts at, where you decide how to prepare ahead for an unforeseen potential disaster. Emergency Management Process
- DESIGNATE A LEADER: Designate a workplace emergency preparedness leader. This person will be responsible for creating your emergency procedures, keeping them updated, and coordinating training and drills with your organization’s emergency preparedness contact. Creating workplace emergency procedures should be collaborative. The leader of the process should organize a team of office representatives to Emergency Management Process participate in developing and updating your workplace emergency procedures.
- CONDUCT A SITE ASSESSMENT: The emergency preparedness office team should tour your location to identify the best and most efficient emergency procedure applications according to your area’s resources and potential hazards.
- CARRY OUT BUILDING/OFFICE AREA TOUR: While touring the area, consider the following items and make notes for reference:
• Exits (including windows on the first level area)
• Doors/Areas that can be secured
• Available means (furniture, door stops, etc.) to secure an area that does not have a locking door Emergency Management Process Location of fire extinguishers, Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs), emergency phones, and fire alarm pull stations
• Evacuation routes (identify more than one)
• Gathering areas after evacuation (Muster/Assembly point Emergency Management Process.
- BUILDING EVACUATION:
• A muster point is a key piece in any Emergency Plan. It should be well known and clearly marked to provide an easy location during an emergency Identify the best area outside your building to take shelter in the event of an Emergency. The idea of having a muster point in the first place is to provide a spot for making sure Emergency Management Process
• everyone is accounted for during an emergency to aid roll-calls or head counts rather than allowing staff to randomly aim at different directions.
- RESPONSE PHASE:
• Following an emergency occurring, the agencies then move to a response phase, where you execute plans, and may end up improvising some areas of their response (due to gaps in the planning phase, which are inevitable due to the individual nature of most incidents).
- RECOVERY PHASE:
• The next stage is the Recovery phase following the incident, where you assist in the clear up from the incident, or help the people involved overcome their mental trauma.
- MITIGATION PHASE:
• The final phase in the circle is mitigation, which involves taking steps to ensure no re-occurrence is possible, or putting additional plans in place to ensure less damage is done. This should feedback in to the preparedness stage, with updated plans in place to deal with future emergencies, thus completing the circle.
CONCLUSION
• Emergency Action Plan prevent fatalities and injuries, reduce damage to buildings, stock and equipment.
• Protect the Environment and the community Accelerate the resumption of normal operation.
• Therefore, being prepared can reduce fear, anxiety and losses that accompany disaster.
To help you plan and execute compliance in Emergencies and Evacuations, Rcl Industrial Safety Centre have created a comprehensive Health, Safety and Environment roadmap to help you achieve your goals.
At RCL Industrial Safety Centre these training is also available in different Nigerian languages like PIDGIN,YORUBA,HAUSA AND IGBO and also You can get to register on any safety training from RCL Industrial Safety Centre through this link www.safetycentre.ng/training_register
Our company (RCL Industrial Safety Centre) is an indigenous company dedicated to Health, Safety and Environment Training and Services.
We are technical partners of the National Industrial Safety Council of Nigeria (NISCN) as well as approved training partners of most major International Occupational Safety and Health organizations like NEBOSH, and corporate members of ISPON (Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria) with thousands of personnel trained in various areas till date.
If you’ve any questions or concerns about compliance or e-learning, please get in touch.
Visit our website: www.safetycentre.ng
Email: sale@safetycentre.ng or mma@safetycentre.ng
Contact us on: +234 8098600070, 08099700070, 09057666623/25/26
We’re happy to help!