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Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP

Every year businesses lose billions of dollars and suffer serious casualties as a result of natural and man-made disasters. The tragic events of September 11 have forced every company to focus on its preparations to deal with emergencies. Employers need to take steps to safeguard their people as well as their equipment, property and other physical assets and to ensure their ability to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.

The key to emergency preparedness is advance planning. One element in almost every crisis is confusion. Employees who are aware of an emergency preparedness plan, understand its requirements and have received training in its procedures will be able to respond in a crisis situation in an orderly manner. As a result, decisions can be made properly and lives and property, can be saved.

Every employer needs to look at the unique circumstances of its operations to design the appropriate plan. This article identifies the critical issues that an employer should consider when developing an emergency preparedness plan.

The Emergency Preparedness Team

The first step in preparing for emergencies is designating a team to draw up the preparedness plan. The Federal Emergency Management Administration suggests that employers establish a team to: (1) encourage broad participation and involve more people in the planning process; (2) share the work and enable participants to give more time and energy to the process; (3) increase the visibility, credibility and importance of emergency planning in the workplace; and (4) ensure that the plan is complete and adequately covers all of the facility's needs. The size of the team depends on the nature of the facility's operations, the number of employees, the complexity of the functions performed at the facility and the value of assets (including intellectual property) located at the facility.

Once the team is established, it should have specific authority, granted by the company's chief executive, the project manager or the plant manager. This stated authority is necessary to prevent interdepartmental disputes or turf battles. The company also should designate a leader for the team, with specific responsibilities and budgetary authority to ensure that the team produces a complete work product.

Analyze Potential Emergencies

The team needs to look at the company's vulnerabilities. It may not be able to identify all possible contingencies, but the team should identify the types of problems the facility might face. For example, although the companies with offices in the World Trade Center could not have anticipated the specific method by which the buildings were attacked, they could have anticipated a substantial fire in the building and prepared plans to evacuate employees safely.

To identify the potential problems a company might face, there are broad categories that should be considered. First, the team should look at the company's historical record and consider the types of emergencies that have occurred previously at the facility, in the industry or at other facilities in related fields. Second, the team should look at the geographic area in which the facility is located and consider whether the area is subject to certain risks as a result of its location. For example, a plant may face risks because of the climate in the region where it is located (blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods), its proximity to transportation routes and airports (airplane crashes, hazardous material spills) or its proximity to other companies that use or store hazardous materials.

The team also should consider the risk of problems resulting from technological failures, human error or a combination of both. For example, for a railroad, a signaling error could cause an accident. For a manufacturing company, an employee's failure to calibrate machinery properly could lead to a fire. It is important to look at the risks that are unique to a specific industry or to industries providing important public services. For example, the media has focused recently on threats to water treatment plants and nuclear power plants. Operators of these facilities need to increase security to prevent sabotage or other disruptions that would threaten continued service or public safety.

Once the risks facing a company's operations have been identified, the team should carefully go through the potential crisis from beginning to final resolution, and then it should plan the company's response at each step in the process. Issues to consider include:

• Notifying employees that an emergency situation has occurred.
  
  
• Notifying essential employees who are off-site that an emergency situation has occurred and that they should come in immediately.
  
  
• Notifying emergency and rescue services, including police, fire, emergency medical technicians and other health care professionals.
  
  
• Communicating with media.
  
  
• Communicating with employees' families.
  
  
• Communicating with vendors, customers, other third-parties and the public.
  
  
• Safeguarding personnel, including means to evacuate employees, if necessary.
  
  
• Providing first aid and other emergency medical treatment.
  
  
• Safeguarding critical records, documents, equipment, inventory and other physical assets.
  
  
• Preserving computer records.
  
  
• Preserving telephone records and voicemail messages.
  
  
• Maintaining safety equipment, such as fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and sprinklers.
  
  
• Coordinating repairs with insurance carriers and state/local governments.
  
  
• Obtaining temporary use of alternative equipment or facilities while making repairs.

In formulating these steps, it is useful to keep the organization's mission in mind. This focus will help determine priorities after the immediate threats to employees have been addressed. Similarly, it may be helpful to prioritize the organization's functions. A company may wish to devote more attention and resources to those departments that help it to achieve its long-term purpose and less to those departments that only provide support.

Resources

Parts of the preparedness plan probably already are in existence in most companies although not in a single, readily accessible place. For this reason, the team should carefully review existing company policies and documentation. Elements of the preparedness plan can be found in fire protection plans, evacuation plans, health and safety programs, employee manuals, hazardous material plans, risk management plans and security procedures. All these elements should be reviewed and collected.

The team also should identify available outside resources. Local governments, fire departments and police departments have in place procedures for responding to certain emergencies, which can be incorporated in whole or in relevant part into the plan. For example, a company located in an isolated area subject to flooding could obtain evacuation routes from local authorities.

One very useful document is a call list. This document identifies all persons with responsibilities in case of emergencies, including non-employees such as local fire, police and ambulance service contacts. The list should provide contact information for each person at any time of the day or night, such as office numbers, home numbers, cellular phone numbers and pager numbers. Some companies copy this list onto a wallet-sized laminated card for every member of management to ensure that the information is readily accessible if needed.

Similarly, companies may wish to create a telephone tree or other means of reaching employees quickly in times of crises. Employees may not be able to reach their supervisors because of damage to the telephone lines or because the members of the management team are on emergency detail and are unavailable. Companies should establish alternate lines of communication so employees will know what is happening and what is expected of them.

Training and Implementation

Once the plan is established, it is essential to communicate its contents throughout the company and to train employees on its requirements. The plan is not useful if it is kept only in binders in managers' offices. Instead, every employee needs to know the plan's contents and, specifically, what is expected of him/her in case of emergency.

In addition, companies may want to distribute their plans on a need-to-know-basis beyond their employees. Local public officials, including police, fire, and rescue teams, may need a copy of the plan. In addition, depending on the business and the relationship, companies may decide to provide copies to other third parties, such as customers or vendors.

There are a number of different forms of training companies can provide. Initially, companies may want to have information sessions to explain the provisions of the contingency plan to employees and to answer questions. Further training could include meetings to go over potential emergencies that could affect the plant and to discuss how to respond to each. This process provides a cost-effective and efficient method to identify areas of confusion or overlap.

Each company also should run drills to practice dealing with emergencies and to ensure that the procedures that seem complete and effective on paper actually work. Companies may first want to run separate drills to test each specific function, such as medical response, emergency notifications and warnings. Ultimately, when feasible, companies should conduct a comprehensive drill, simulating a real-life emergency involving the entire plant and any community organizations (i.e., police, fire, medical rescue teams) on which the company would rely.

In addition to the training function, these drills provide a means of feedback and improvement for the emergency procedure. All participants should take notes during the training sessions to keep track of what went well, the problems that occurred and the concerns or questions that arose. The emergency response team can use these notes to improve the process. The plan should be constantly updated to reflect new information.

The final step in implementing an effective emergency response plan is integrating it into the business' daily operations. Senior management should fully support the plan and build awareness of its requirements whenever possible. The company should look for opportunities to include information about emergency preparedness in employee mailings and newsletters. The business' functional areas, such as accounting, human resources and finance, should incorporate emergency planning concepts when appropriate. Most important, however, rank-and-file employees should keep alert to safety issues as part of their day-to-day duties and should look for opportunities to improve the facility's emergency preparedness.

Conclusion

Although people generally want to avoid thinking about potential crises, recent events have highlighted the need for businesses to have a plan in place to safeguard their employees and their assets. By spending some time now in preparation, businesses can avert disasters where possible, recover from more quickly from unavoidable problems and prevent loss of life and property.

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For more information about the issues covered in this report, please contact Linda S. Husar in our Los Angeles office at 213-576-8017 or at lshusar@thelen.com or contact your Thelen attorney. For more information about Thelen's Construction and Government Contracts Department, click here.





©2001 Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP