Is Your Facility Prepared for Emergency?
Principles and Practices for Success
No matter what your business is, where you are located, and what threats you may face; there are some basic principles and practices
that will help you know your facility better, lessen the potential for an incident to occur, make your employees safer and more confident in their work, assure the best possible response to any incident.
What are these principles and practices
2. A Commitment to excellence and continuous improvement in all aspects of your operations.
3. A Thorough hazard analysis of your facility for all threats and the potential consequences for each hazard.
4. Being intimately familiar with your facility (processes, storage, weather, potential exposures on and off site) Your utilities including firewater and fire protection system. This is done by pre-emergency planning and regular revision of the plans.
5. Providing a training program that provides employees with every bit of knowledge, skill, and information that they need to operate safely and effectively.
6. Providing all necessary equipment and PPE required by regulation and indicated in the hazard survey of the site. Provide a program for regular inspection, testing, maintenance and record keeping for all such items .
7. Preparing emergency response plans that are detailed, provide easy to understand information and tactical guidance. These plans should be quickly accessible to the people that need them. Be part of initial employee training and continuing education.
8. Commit to a regular exercise and drill program to assure the effectiveness of the emergency plan and the actual response. Drills should be designed to test the critical parts of the plan and the response. There should be observation and honest evaluation of the process and immediate feedback and corrective action should be taken.
All of these principles are good alone. Together they can provide an efficient, safe, and prepared facility.
Human Life as a Priority .
This is the key to the best possible outcome. Everyone involved in the operation from the top down should function based on this concept. Even a small injury not only affects the employee and the operation but creates expenses in lost time, medical care, shortening careers, and training and replacing new employees. For a real life example go to www.osha.gov/safetypays where you will find a calculator that gives the impact of injury in economic terms.
More devastating than the economic impact, the loss to a family or partner if someone loses their life. A little empathy by putting yourself in that situation, will help you understand why it is easier and, yes, cheaper to commit to.
Coming from a time when there was no stop work authority, I can personally attest to its effectiveness in the modern world. If you choose your employees with consideration of their character. You inform them of the hazards they may face and empower them to stop work in any case of defective equipment or other unsafe conditions, You will have a safer and more efficient work place.
Another process that has been proven to enhance safety is the Job Safety Analysis or JHA Where employees will evaluate each step of a job, identify possible hazards and a contingency for each to make the job safer.
Excellence and Continuous Improvement
Everyone is familiar with the adage "Anything worth doing is worth doing right" It is not only worth it but is is safer, more efficient and less costly. This is something that must be established and reenforced from the top of the organization down. People take pride in being part of an organization where things operate well. Management must acknowledge when things are done right by recognizing teams for good work. There will be times when corrective action for poor performance may be needed. Complacency and indifference will not only hurt the efficiency of any process, but will make it less safe. These negatives occur when employee feel like their work performance is not making a difference are is unappreciated
The commitment to excellence extends to Maintenance, Testing Inspections and record keeping of all systems critical to the operation. This should be systematically according to regulations, existing standards, and or manufacturers recommendations. Delaying any of these things to save money has often resulted in severe financial losses.
Emergency Response and Security Drills should be designed to evaluate performance of the system, responders, and the plan. Drills also allow the responders and those managing the response to function in a controlled situation as they would in an actual incident. Every drill should have stated goals and evaluation, feedback, and action items assigned. The goal is always to improve.
Great organizations never stand pat. They are always striving for better. This is especially effective in emergency preparedness and response.
Through and Complete Hazard Analysis and Facility Familiarization
Your Facility and the area around it, is something that should be evaluated for hazards. You should evaluate the potential hazard, the potential consequences, and the chances of the incident with that hazard occurring in terms of low, medium or high.
The area you are in may have the threat of natural disaster (hurricane, tornado, snowstorm, excessive cold or heat) The facility should be surveyed and the potential impact of a natural disaster on people, systems, and operations should be evaluated, and plans developed, presented to the employees, and implemented. For example in the event of freezing weather that may affect a certain system (fire water), a plan to weather proof, or flow to avoid freezing may be implemented. In the event of a hurricane or damage from tornado the facility may have to be shut down, run with a stay on site crew over an extended period of time, or a repair or maintenance crew should be deployed. In the case of a potential or actual offsite impact, government agency may have to be notified for regulatory or response assistance. Weather data such as wind speed and direction at the site can help evaluate the impact of potential releases.
If you are covered by Process Safety requirements you are doing a lot of this work based on your particular facility. The concepts of PSM can also be useful in looking at your facility. Products produced, stored or used as part of the daily work of the site should be evaluated for potential impact on the facility and the people who work in and around it. Your chemical inventory and the Safety Data Sheets will provide valuable information for the hazard survey.
Looking at the buildings, assuring that the buildings and their systems meet code, how many people are there day or night, what hazards they could possibly face are part of the survey. Looking at the size of the building, its floorplan, its type of construction, and it contents will help in determining how it will stand up to a fire. Egress or Exits from the building should be evaluated for number and access by occupants. There are established formulas that can be used to calculate the water required for extinguishment. This should be compared with the amount of water that is actually available which can be determined by the local water provider or by a gradient flow test on a private water system.
If a highway or rail line runs though or near the site determine the frequency of Haz Mat shipments and plan for the possibility of a derailment or other type of release.
If there are schools, hospitals or other facilities that potentially could be impacted by an incident at your facility, evaluate that potential and develop a plan to notify those affected so that they can take protective actions
Know your facility roads, gates, overhead clearances, location of utility shutoffs and fire hydrants. Document these on a map you can provide to first responders for familiarization.
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While looking at the whole facility, determine the safest location for muster areas that will provide safety for personnel. If a gas or vapor hazard exists, there should be established shelter in place locations for impacted personnel.
A survey of the gates and fence line should be used to evaluate potential security threats. Local Law Enforcement can assist in this regard. about your facility.
Your knowledge of your facility's hazards, and potential impacts will be a very valuable asset in an emergency.
Training Program
Every person in the organization needs some training. All of the training should reflect the organization's attitude towards excellence. New employees should be oriented on the entire site, company policies on employee conduct, Personal Protective Equipment, Emergency procedures (including alarm signals and muster areas) , First Aid/CPR/AED, if working with chemicals Hazard Communication, and HazMat First Responder Awareness Level or higher (if needed) Fire Extinguisher training hands on should be conducted annually. Then training on the employees particular job. The entire process should stress safe and compliant operations and an emphasis on the value of each individual doing the job correctly EVERY time.
Following Training, an evaluation must be conducted to document understanding. For hands on training it should be evaluated by an experienced employee by use of a check list. All training and evaluations should be documented and records kept. For new employees a mentor should be assigned to help them take on their duties.
Necessary equipment and PPE
A site hazard analysis must be done by qualified personnel to determine hazards to the employees. Engineering controls are first used to address the documented hazards. Next work practices may be adopted which also reduce the hazard. Finally, PPE is chosen based on the hazard evaluation, provided to employees who must be trained on how to use, inspect, and maintain the equipment. Some equipment, such as respiratory protection or hearing protection, may require physical examinations initially and annually.
Chemical protective clothing must be chosen based on the substances it will be exposed to.
All PPE should meet recognized national standards.
Some equipment can require a significant financial outlay. Your hazard evaluation, based on consequence and likely hood of a potential incident will help you prioritize your budget.
Preparing emergency response plans
Familiarity with your facility, the processes, structures and general layout will help in making detailed emergency response plans. A plan should show an accurate location of the structure on the site plan, location of water supplies, utility shut offs, etc. If is a building it should show construction type, square footage, location of hazmat, confined spaces, access points, and an accurate floor plan. The required fire flow for the building exposure, or foam calculations for a tank should be listed.
All emergency plans should be updated at least annually and when there is a significant change on site.
This information should be easily accessible in a book or a tablet or laptop.
Tactical guidance should cover the essential items for the area but allow for discretion of the officer in charge.
This essential information will allow responders to operate safely having essential information they need.
The plans can also be used for familiarization training or shared with mutual aid responders.
Emergency plans can be used as the basis to design a drill,
which, if evaluated properly, can be used to improve or validate the plan.
Regular Drill Program
Drills can be useful tools in preparing responders for an actual incident and evaluating the effectiveness of both the plan and the performance of the team.
The Drill can vary from a simulation or table top which will test the incident management of the command team. Or a full scale exercise which will allow the whole team and even mutual aid responders to interact.
The drill should be designed by a team to determine what they want to test such as alarm, communication, deployment of particular equipment, personnel muster, etc. The time and date of the drill should be held closely by the team. The drill should be initiated with an announcement saying "this is a drill" all communication should start with" this is a drill" in the unlikely event of an actual emergency happening at the same time as a drill, an announcement shall say "this is no drill"
Drill Facilitators shall be selected and provided with how the drill should go. They should also keep the drill within a within a reasonable time. They are also responsible to assure that the operations are done safely. Facilitators may also declare responders injured or killed depending on what they do.
Devices like smoke machines can be used to simulate smoke or chemical release. Strobe lights or a ribbon can simulate the location of a fire.
For confined space, search and rescue or high angle rescue drills a rescue mannequin can be used to simulate a real person.
Muster areas should be establish and all personnel should be accounted for or reported as missing.
Immediately following the completion of the drill and the return to service of all equipment an immediate debrief should be conducted with all personnel and the facilitators, and observers.
After a report on how the drill proceeded the discussion should focus on:
What went right, What discrepancies were observed.
Corrective Action for discrepancies observed are specifically assigned to people involved with an assigned date to complete.
The drill evaluation team will write a complete report on the drill including corrective actions and any possible changes to the emergency plan.
Conclusion:
The combination of your organizations commitment to these principles and procedure will make you better prepared for emergencies. It will also make for a more efficient, and safer workplace