Is Your Emergency Response Adequate?

Many organizations' procedures for evacuating their premises in an emergency are outdated and inadequate for dealing with modern day threats, delegates at the 2006 National Safety Symposium will be told.

Simon Ancliffe, managing director at specialist emergency planning consultants Evacuation Strategies, will reveal that in the post 9/11 environment in which organizations operate, traditional methods of evacuation are no longer fit for purpose.

"Traditional evacuation techniques are based on the threat of fire. That's not sufficient for the wide range of threats we face today. If your organisation was faced with a 9/11-type situation, assembling in the car park only 50 feet away would clearly not be adequate. But too many organisations have not thought about, or realised, this," Simon said.

Simon will also tell the symposium, which takes place at the Holiday Inn, in Leicester city centre on 4-5 September, that communication with staff in an emergency also needs to be clearly thought through and drummed home regularly before an emergency occurs.

"Communicating emergency procedures with staff via two pages of A4 on an induction and with standard fire drills is not going to prepare them for a real-life emergency. There needs to be much better training, and thought given to how to communicate if setting off the fire alarm is the wrong thing to do, and then to communicating with staff and the outside world post-event."

Simon will bring his presentation to life with a number of case studies, videos and simulations, and will give advice on how to implement a robust emergency plan.

SOURCE: IOSH