Why is evacuation planning so difficult

This disconnect can cause confusion and panic in an emergency. You could have the wrong people giving people the wrong directions, or even multiple people giving conflicting directions. This can cause either a stampede of confused and frightened people or it can cause people to hesitate, losing the window of opportunity they need to escape harm.

You may be surprised by the erroneous assumptions both facility managers and tenants may make. For example, I once encountered a client who assumed the building management staff would help evacuate handicapped employees. The facility manager, on the other hand, assumed his job stopped at providing the appropriate equipment for handicapped tenants on the stairways and the tenant would actually assist the person down the stairs. Recommendation: Start a dialogue!

Communication between facility managers and tenants is critical. Facility managers should explain to their tenants how they will manage such events. Tenants need to discuss their assumptions about evacuation with their facility manager. Issue 2: Not Identifying the Real Risks. Every facility is unique. In putting together an evacuation plan, you need to know more than simply where the exits are located. For example, sending people out into severe weather could cause an even greater loss of life or injury than sheltering them in a protected part of the building.

Similarly, if the building faces a biological threat, the last thing you want to do is to evacuate your tenants. You need to keep them safe inside the building until the emergency response team tells you how to proceed. Recommendation: Create a joint emergency response team for the building. Get the facility manager, tenants, security staff, local emergency response and experts in crisis management to develop this team.

Then, the team can develop evacuation procedures for multiple scenarios and educate everyone involved on those procedures. There were several problems with the implementation, the biggest being that the signs were only in English. Since this was a major downtown building with a food court and retail stores, about 40 percent of the employees and customers did not speak English. Recommendation: Take a good, hard look at who uses your building. For example, are there patients visiting medical offices for treatment, day care centers, high security areas, government offices, high profile targets, large tour groups or visitor populations?

Often extra precautions are required for shelter-in-place such as turning off ventilation systems that could draw in air contaminated from the hazard. Factors contributing to the high number of evacuation injuries and deaths include: heavy smoke, flying embers, panicked drivers and the sheer volume of cars and horse trailers on the road.

Traffic collisions are also common during evacuation efforts. These incidents compromise the evacuation of other residents, as well as delay firefighters from protecting homes threatened by flames.

For these reasons, it is safer for residents in shelter-in-place communities to stay inside their fire-resistive homes than risk evacuating on dangerous roadways. Use of Non-Traditional Shelters — Research has been conducted into the use of non traditional facilities such as nursing homes as public shelters. A nursing home may not seem like the safest harbor in a storm, but a researcher at RTI International says it might actually be an excellent place to provide shelter, storage and emergency medical treatment in a disaster.

Lucy A. Savitz is a health services researcher at Research Triangle Institute, the nonprofit scientific research and technology development corporation. In a study she recently completed for the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Savitz found that nursing homes have the potential to contribute to their larger communities in times of public-health emergency. They can serve as alternative treatment centers, provide shelter to the displaced, and store hazardous material gear and other supplies, she said.

Susan Feeney of the American Health Care Association said nursing homes and elderly care centers in Florida took in senior citizens left homeless from the rash of hurricanes that ravaged the state last year, while New York first responders converted nursing homes into triage centers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. Feeney said the homes are a perfect refuge because of the combination of trained nurses, medical supplies, and possibly empty beds.

The key is to include nursing home administrators in emergency response planning. While we often think of the impact of severe weather events on safety and business continuity, fire is a commonly underestimated threat. If you do have to evaluate, will you have access to critical information to facilitate business continuity? An evacuation plan is only as good as its documentation, which should detail all the essential information.

Physical copies should be clearly marked and accessible with at least one copy stored offsite, while electronic copies are also invaluable if access to your facility becomes limited. The more your employees know about the types of emergencies which may occur as well as how to respond to them, the more seamless your organizational response will be.

Emergency response planning is dynamic, not static. Regularly review your plan to determine areas in need of changes. One simple way to identify problem areas while reinforcing emergency procedures with your constituents? The best evacuation plans also have mechanisms in place for supporting employee health, wellbeing and recovery after a disaster. No emergency evacuation plan is complete without covering the critical component of communication.

How will you make sure your constituents have access to the information they need when they need it? Keep in mind that the most effective methods of communication vary from person to person.