This list is a minimum of the tasks that should be identified and will vary based upon the type of business and what functions your organization may have. If, for example, your business is very dependent upon information technology, it will likely be necessary to include an individual response for information systems within the emergency response team. With the addition of any other responsibilities you may identify, it is critical that you also identify a responsible individual before an emergency to ensure awareness of each necessary task.

Not only should your communications plan include actual equipment, it should also include procedures on how to conduct communications during the course of an emergency, both within your organization and within the community and local area. Some considerations include:

Some items that must be included in this determination are:

All these items, along with their locations, must be identified before the start of the emergency. Once this has been accomplished, you and your executive team must identify a responsible individual who will ensure this resource is secured and safeguarded until resolution of the emergency incident.

The best method to mitigate congestion in the event of an emergency is to identify all critical tasks that would be necessary to accomplish and ensure there are alternate people or sections identified and trained so that they can assist with, or even accomplish the work, should the primary personnel become unavailable or unable to accomplish that particular task.

We have already discussed the most important task that assists in managing emergency operations—designation of your emergency response team and delineation of each member’s tasks and responsibilities. Upon any notification of an emergency, it is necessary that the IC within your organization determine where the team will operate during the incident and clearly communicate this information to the entire team to begin the process of managing the overall organization’s emergency operations. Another important action in managing the emergency response is to determine how the staff will accomplish staff recalls and communications throughout the response. You must clearly identify who performs the recall and have alternate plans in case the local phone system is down. Additionally, you must have the ability to notify personnel within your facilities to ensure employees take appropriate action. The next task in managing your organizational emergency response operation is the public information officer policy. We had earlier discussed the need to designate a point of contact who will handle all communication with the press. Not only is it important that this individual and the other members of the emergency response team are aware that the press should go through the organization’s designated person, but it is also important that all employees understand this and are aware of any other public information officer policies. This can save a great deal of miscommunication during the actual response to an incident. The final task that is part of managing the emergency response operations is to develop and provide a reporting system for any necessary information during the course of the incident. This process should also ensure the organization conducts a critique and evaluation at the conclusion of the emergency response. With accurate record-keeping, both throughout the response and at the conclusion, your organization can evaluate problems in your current emergency response procedures and correct them. Although this task will be extremely difficult to do at the conclusion of an actual emergency, it is an important aspect of your emergency response and can not only improve your ability to respond to emergencies but can also make your entire organization better.

Of particular concern within this emergency response area are two functions: traffic control and crowd control. In the event of an actual emergency, many employees will want to get away from the facility as quickly as possible, whereas emergency responders and other agencies will need to get access to assist with the response efforts. It is critical that your organization have plans to ensure employees wishing to leave the area do not hinder access by the inbound emergency responders. To conduct traffic and crowd control, it may be necessary to obtain assistance from additional employees to help control the huge increase you will see both in the amount of vehicle traffic and people in and around your facility during these incidents, and as a result your response plans should account for the added personnel.

The first task involved with emergency medical operations is accounting for your employees and identifying casualties. We briefly discussed the importance of employee accountability as part of the human resources point of contact within your emergency response team; however, the importance of this task cannot be overstated. Accounting for all your employees and visitors is critical because the primary focus of many emergencies rapidly moves from the incident itself toward identification of all involved personnel with particular emphasis on the exact numbers and names of individuals who have sustained any significant injuries or death. The best example I can provide in order to emphasize that your organization ensures you have a process in place to accomplish this accountability can be found in 9/11. The vast majority of all communication into the area was focused on obtaining the status of friends and family members. This will occur in every type of emergency that involves the potential for injury and so it is vital that your organization develop a thorough process to ensure accurate accounting of all personnel who were in your facility at the time of an incident. One of the simplest methods to accomplish this accountability is to task all supervisors to account for their personnel in the event of an incident and make notifications on the number of personnel accounted for, any injuries, and the number missing up the chain of command. There is also a need to ensure accountability of any visitors to your business at the time of the incident so your point of contact will need to ensure a process is established that conducts a thorough accounting of all personnel within your facility at the time of the emergency. Accounting for these individuals will also be your organization’s responsibility; using visitor logs or access control processes to help identify these personnel so they can be included in your accounting needs to be taken into account when planning your accountability process.

Establishing first aid and casualty collection points is another important task involved with emergency medical operations. Before an incident, your organization should identify a specific location, or several locations depending upon the size of your facility, where injured personnel would be brought. These consolidated areas allow medical personnel to move to these areas and provide care to more of the injured personnel than could be accomplished by having to move through the entire facility themselves to find any individuals requiring medical care. These collection points should have basic first aid kits to help in initially treating the injured and have equipment to transport the injured such as folding stretchers.

Preventive medicine is another aspect of emergency medical operations and provides for public health and sanitation services during the incident. Two primary considerations within preventive medicine are to ensure drinking water is available and sanitation services are provided in the event that personnel must remain in the facility and public water and sewage is inoperative. Storing bottled drinking water and determining a source of chemical toilets, should the need arise, resolves these concerns.

In the event of any death, the primary assistance an affected organization would need to provide to coroners is the identification of remains and disposition of personal effects. Identification of remains should be accomplished by developing an accounting of all employees through the methods discussed earlier. The other consideration, disposition of personal effects, may likely fall upon your organization, depending upon the area and procedures of local law enforcement. If so, it is important to take an inventory of any items found, collect them into a sealed package, and store them in a secured area—much like the procedures involved with collecting and storing evidence as was discussed in Chapter 8. In this manner, when the employee’s next of kin is ready to pickup his or her effects, they can be provided the inventory and sealed packet.

Facility management and plant operations provides for damage assessment, emergency debris removal, shelter construction, and other engineering operations. Damage assessment depends upon accurate record-keeping of the current status of your facility and its equipment, as it is virtually impossible to determine what damage has been done without an initial baseline of what resources your company started with.

Facility relocation operations provide for long-distance evacuation and relocation of persons from the threatened or affected areas of the facility. Several considerations are involved with facility relocation:

Transportation is a key function within the facility relocation operations because a process to transfer personnel to other job sites may need to occur.

Before any emergency, this team should have completed detailed inventories and surveys of the facility and critical business equipment. During the recovery phase, the damage assessment team must develop itemized lists of all damage, including photographic documentation, as a result of the emergency. These inventories and surveys, along with the itemized lists of all damage sustained, make it possible to streamline the reimbursement process with underwriters and government officials.

After the team has compared the damage against the inventories before the incident, it must identify services, labor, and material necessary to restore operations to preincident levels. It will then determine and prioritize tasks to actually restore these services, labor, and materials. These tasks will then be able to have cost estimates and recovery schedules developed to better divide the various efforts and make them more manageable.

Governmental assistance is a major consideration, particularly if the disaster caused the local, state, or federal government to designate a disaster area that encompasses your company.

Aid can also encompass the expectation that your business will assist the community in the event of a disaster. In community-wide emergencies, business and industry are often requested to assist the local area with personnel, equipment, and shelter. This task should not be overlooked as your organization is working its own recovery.

Because of the potential damage and extent of disruption that can be caused by a bomb, it is best to initially respond to any bomb threat on the assumption that a real bomb does exist. The items to consider whether the threat is valid or not relate to the seriousness of the threat and in general, specificity of the actual threat are the best guide to seriousness. Some items that indicate the specificity of an actual threat and ultimately show a more valid bomb threat include [1]:

Each bomb threat is a separate event and if your organization receives few to none, it is advisable to simply treat the threat as real and immediately proceed with the response procedures covered in the next paragraph. If, however, you receive a significant number of these threats, your executive management team can make the determination to conduct an evacuation based upon the seriousness of the threat.

Regardless of whether you believe the bomb threat is real or not, in the event your organization receives a bomb threat, considerations and actions for bombs, bomb threats, and suspicious devices after they are received or identified are as follows:

Suspicious packages can also be a potential method to disrupt or attack a business. Your organization should conduct training to employees on how to react should anyone come in contact with a suspicious package and what to do if they receive a bomb threat. Some telltale signs of a suspicious package include:

For suspicious packages received through the mail, there are some actions to consider that will mitigate some of the risks for this type of incident to occur:

In the event a suspicious package or bomb threat is received, there are several actions to help prepare for these incidents. Place caller ID on your company phones to help identify bomb threat callers and consider blocking incoming calls if it is received from a phone with a blocked ID. Another action is to ensure your security procedures ask that staff members regularly conduct checks of their respective work area and report anything out of the ordinary.

In many cases, protest activities are preannounced and the time and place are known. In this eventuality, your executive management team should coordinate with local law enforcement personnel a few days before the event to advise them of the upcoming protest. Even if a protest occurs with no notice, the following considerations apply for either situation: