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Preparing for Disaster

Emergency Procedures

If the fire alarm goes off in your building, do you know what to do? If you discover a water leak while working late one night, do you know who to call and how to respond? Advance preparation of emergency procedures, wide distribution of these procedures, and staff training in implementing them are crucial to disaster preparedness.

Basic Procedures

At a minimum, you will need to prepare the following procedures:

• Building evacuation procedures—specify who is responsible for clearing each floor/area of the building and indicate where staff and visitors from each floor/area should gather outside.
• Emergency call list—provide staff names and after hours phone numbers, with those who can respond most quickly listed first.
• Basic water damage and fire response procedures (see sidebar for samples).

Additional Procedures

Emergency procedures can be prepared for many possible scenarios, including mold outbreak, terrorist attack, power outage, gas or oil leak, various natural disasters, etc. For disasters with advance warning (such as hurricanes, some types of flooding, and wildfires), you can also prepare a list of actions to take once a warning is received. In general, you should prepare procedures for those hazards you identified as the most serious during your risk assessment.

  See Water Damage Procedures (PDF, 248k).

  See Fire Damage Procedures (PDF, 244k).