Has anyone conducted an emergency drill when the director's are having an important meeting in the premise ? What has been the reaction of the management ? What is the general level of support and involvement of the top management in any such drills ?
In a routine firedrill, do we normally put a fire and check the preparedness of the fire control abilities ? What are the other types of emergencies for which drills can be made to assess an emergency response capability.
My intention in asking this is to see both top management's active support as well as to get some innovative emergency drill ideas ...
This is indeed a good idea to have a drill on such an occasion although we haven't so far had one while a high level meeting is in progress at the plant. Our CEO is normally stationed at the site and when informed of an emergency (drill or real), he would immediately rush to the site and would virtually take control of the situation and wouldn't leave until normalcy is restored. If it's a real incident, he would essentially hold a high level review meeting once the investigations are over in order to make sure that effective actions (including document review) are taken wherever discrepancies were reported/ observed.
We normally put something like dry grass/ dead wood, piles of garbage etc. on fire to simulate the scenario else it wouldn't enable us to evaluate the level of preparedness and people's response required during the actual emergencies.
In addition to Fire, the other emergencies identified as part of our 'On Site EP' are:
• Explosion (Boilers & Explosive storage)
• Accidental emissions to air & discharge of pollutants to land
• Accidental Spillage of Hazardous Chemicals (gasoline, explosives, acids or chemicals)
• Food Poisoning in Canteen / poisoning of common water storage (around 6000 people use water from the same source)
• Sabotage (being located in tribal belt)
• Theft of gamma ray (radioactive) Source (used for analytical purpose)
• Collapse of structure (heavy movement of earth moving machinery & heavy vehicles in the premises)
Fire & other top 4 on the list have been categorized as high priority & the rest as medium priority based on the likelihood & potential damage each of the emergencies can cause. Six monthly mock drills are done for the top order emergencies while for others, the preparedness level is evaluated through audits/interviews/ EHS inspections etc.
In addition to meeting the requirement of EMS/OHSAS, we are legally mandated to conduct and report the outcomes of periodic mock drills to the concerned regulatory authorities.
Especially in case of fire, one should consider conducting mock drills during late night or early morning hours wherein you can compare the degree of response received during 'normal' and 'abnormal' hours. My experience is that the response is very poor, in particular, between 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM and as I have read somewhere, about 40% of the fire disasters have so far occurred during these odd hours.