Managing Emergency Response in the Workplace

Video Tran­scrip­tion:

Hey there, and wel­come to the next install­ment of The Budd Group Safe­ty Train­ing. We’re going to be talk­ing a lit­tle bit about how you can keep your­self safe dur­ing dif­fer­ent types of emer­gen­cies, whether you are at work or at home. The first one that we want to talk about is weath­er events, which is extreme­ly rel­e­vant right now as we are com­ing up on hur­ri­cane sea­son. In our mar­kets, the two pri­ma­ry weath­er events that we need to be con­cerned about are tor­na­does and hur­ri­canes. So if you are at work when one of these weath­er events is hap­pen­ing, it’s extreme­ly impor­tant that you are famil­iar with the site spe­cif­ic emer­gency response plan. Your man­ag­er should have a copy of this and should be able to train you on it. This is sim­ply going to tell you where to go in a dif­fer­ent type of emer­gency or who to contact.

If you hap­pen to be at home, it’s equal­ly impor­tant that you have your own emer­gency response plan so that you know how to keep you and your fam­i­ly safe in a time of emer­gency. The pri­ma­ry things that we need to be con­cerned about when we’re deal­ing with these types of weath­er events are wind and rain. Wind can cause heavy objects to fly around and poten­tial­ly strike us. And rain, as you know, can quick­ly cause a flash flood and cause lots and lots of trou­ble for us. So to avoid these things, we want to make sure that we know where we’re going to go to seek cov­er. We want to be able to find a place that is away from any heavy objects or away from any glass or win­dows. If you hap­pen to be out­side or in your vehi­cle, this means get­ting out of the vehi­cle and find­ing the low­est absolute spot that you can be, and cov­er­ing your neck and your head.

And to avoid water or ris­ing water, we’d sim­ply want to be aware of our sur­round­ings and know where we would go in a time of emer­gency, that we would­n’t be trapped and that we can be as high as pos­si­ble to avoid that water. And as a reminder one more time, it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant when you are at work that you know what you’re going to do in these types of emer­gen­cies. This means being very famil­iar with the emer­gency response plan for your site, and this also means know­ing how you’re going to com­mu­ni­cate with your man­ag­er. If you’re not at work yet, how are you going to learn about this emer­gency? And if you are at work, how are you going to com­mu­ni­cate that with your man­ag­er? Whether it’s a phone call or a text mes­sage, it’s just impor­tant that you and your man­ag­er have worked this out ahead of time.

The next type of emer­gency that we want to cov­er is a fire emer­gency. Again, this is hope­ful­ly some­thing that you nev­er have to face at work. But if you do, it’s impor­tant that you know how to han­dle it. Here at The Budd Group, we’re going to clas­si­fy fires in two ways: fires that we should fight and fires that we should not fight, fires that we need to get out immediately.

There’s a cou­ple of ways that we can iden­ti­fy fires that we do not need to fight. The first is if you don’t know what is burn­ing, then you should­n’t try to fight it because there are dif­fer­ent types of fires. There’s dif­fer­ent clas­si­fi­ca­tions of fires, and it may be that the fire extin­guish­er that you have is not capa­ble of putting out the fire that you need to put out. The sec­ond is very simple.

If it’s just too large or if it’s spread­ing too quick­ly, you need to get out and you don’t need to wor­ry about fight­ing that fire. And the third would be if it’s pro­duc­ing some type of tox­ic smoke that is mak­ing peo­ple have trou­ble breath­ing, you just need to get out no mat­ter how small the fire is and con­tact the author­i­ties immediately.

If you were going to try to fight the fire with a fire extin­guish­er like this, it’s impor­tant that you know how to use it. The acronym that we like to use is PASS, P‑A-S‑S. And that sim­ply means to pull the pin, to aim the hose where you want to spray it, to squeeze the trig­ger, and then sweep the area so that you’re not stay­ing in one area but you’re cov­er­ing the entire base of the fire that you’re try­ing to pull out.

Again, that’s pass, pull, aim, squeeze and sweep. But I want to remind you that as an employ­ee of The Budd Group, it is not your respon­si­bil­i­ty to put out a fire. It is your respon­si­bil­i­ty to keep you and those around you safe. So my ulti­mate advice to you is to trust your gut. If it is a fire that you believe that you can­not put out, no mat­ter how small it is, please get out and fol­low the evac­u­a­tion plan that is a part of the emer­gency response plan that you have for your site. And also as soon as it’s safe to do so, con­tact 911 no mat­ter how small the fire. Anoth­er type of emer­gency that hope­ful­ly you have to nev­er face at work is a work­place vio­lence inci­dent. If this were to hap­pen, it’s impor­tant that you know how to respond to it.

So if you were to face this type of event, and it’s impor­tant to know that this type of event does not mean just phys­i­cal vio­lence. This could be emo­tion­al vio­lence or bul­ly­ing or ret­ri­bu­tion, any­thing that you feel is mali­cious in nature. If you were to face this event, it’s impor­tant that you know how to respond to it and maybe how to even pre­vent it. So first, how to pre­vent it. Make sure that you’re pay­ing atten­tion to those around you and pay­ing atten­tion to their atti­tudes and per­son­al­i­ties. And if you notice some­thing that just does­n’t sit well with you, trust your gut and say something.

If you see some­thing, say some­thing, report it to your man­ag­er. Let them know that it’s mak­ing you feel uneasy, and your con­cern for that per­son that you’re work­ing with. Often­times there’s oth­er stuff going on out­side of work that can cause some­one to boil up, and it’s not just any­thing that’s hap­pen­ing in that one moment. So please just look out for that per­son and say some­thing to your man­ag­er. If you do end up in a sit­u­a­tion that becomes vio­lent, the best thing that you can do is sep­a­rate your­self from that sit­u­a­tion imme­di­ate­ly and noti­fy a man­ag­er. If it’s a seri­ous enough event, sep­a­rate your­self from the sit­u­a­tion and noti­fy the author­i­ties, or call 911 immediately.

The last type of emer­gency that we want to talk to you about is one that we hope that you nev­er have to face at work, at home, or any­where else. But it’s one that we believe at The Budd Group is extreme­ly impor­tant for you to be pre­pared for, and that’s an active shoot­er sit­u­a­tion. So we want to walk you through a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent things to help you respond in that type of emer­gency. As you’ve heard in oth­er places, the way that we want to respond to this is run, hide and fight, and in that order. So the first: run. It’s extreme­ly impor­tant that you know any­where you are, whether an event like this is tak­ing place or not, where your exits are, how you would get out of a build­ing if you need­ed to in a hur­ry. Please be aware of your surroundings.

This means not always being glued to our phones, but when we walk into a new space or a new envi­ron­ment, mak­ing sure we know how we would get out of that envi­ron­ment if we need­ed to for any type of emer­gency. The sec­ond response would be to hide. And again, it’s very impor­tant that we know where we are going to hide. So you have be famil­iar with your sur­round­ings and know that in that type of sit­u­a­tion, I would go into this room and I would bar­ri­cade that door with some­thing to keep myself safe and keep those with me safe.

Now for these first two things, it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber in this type of sit­u­a­tion that the law enforce­ment that is show­ing up to help in this sit­u­a­tion, they don’t know who the shoot­er is and who the vic­tims are. So it’s very impor­tant if a law enforce­ment shows up to keep your hands vis­i­ble and to iden­ti­fy your­self so that they know, and lis­ten to what­ev­er they say.

They may ask you to get on the ground or to go out­side. And it’s impor­tant to just lis­ten because again, they don’t know who the vic­tims are or who the shoot­er is. The final thing would be to fight. If you do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to evac­u­ate, you do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hide, your best chance at sur­vival is to engage and use any­thing you can around you as a weapon to fight that shooter.

The last thing we want to talk to you about is the best way to keep you safe dur­ing an active shoot­er event, and that’s to avoid it entire­ly. Most active shoot­er events actu­al­ly do hap­pen at the work­place, though they don’t get a lot of media cov­er­age. Usu­al­ly these types of acci­dents are not iso­lat­ed. Usu­al­ly they hap­pen because some­one has had some­thing going on at home or some­thing going on at work, and they’ve just had enough.

So for that rea­son it’s extreme­ly impor­tant, just like when we talked about with work­place vio­lence, for you to say some­thing if you see some­thing. If you’ve noticed some­one’s behav­iors change and it catch­es you off guard or you notice some­one mak­ing threats or any­thing like that, any­thing that does­n’t sit well with you, please report it to your man­ag­er imme­di­ate­ly so that we can try to help that team­mate and get them the help that they need so that we can avoid sit­u­a­tions like this.

The final thing is we often get the ques­tion, ​“When or how should I call 911?” And the answer is it depends. If you find your­self in this sit­u­a­tion you want to call 911 as soon as it is safe to do so. And that sim­ply means if you’re in an area where you should­n’t be mak­ing noise because it may cause the shoot­er to find you or know where you are, then it would not be a good idea to call it that time.

Let some­one else do it. But if you are in a place where you could make the call, the soon­er that we can get law enforce­ment to that sit­u­a­tion, the bet­ter. Again, we hope that none of these emer­gen­cies are things that any of our employ­ees ever have to face, but we want you to be pre­pared to han­dle them.

Hey there, Budd Group man­agers. Thank you for tak­ing part in this mon­th’s safe­ty train­ing, and thank you for tak­ing the safe­ty of your employ­ees in times of emer­gency, seri­ous­ly. We’ve added this lit­tle clip on the end for you guys to talk a lit­tle bit about how we need to train our employ­ees on this, as well as some of the things that you need in order to begin com­pli­ance regard­ing emer­gen­cies. So as ref­er­enced in the video mul­ti­ple times, it’s impor­tant that each of our accounts have a site-spe­cif­ic emer­gency response plan, and that’s a very sim­ple document.

All it does is out­line what we’re going to do in dif­fer­ent types of emer­gen­cies. The first step to com­ing up with this plan is to make sure that your client or your site that you’re work­ing at and does­n’t already have one that they want you to abide by. They may have a set of stan­dards that they expect you to have writ­ten down and teach your employ­ees as well. But whether they do or whether they don’t, we want to make sure that we adopt our own site-spe­cif­ic plan, and includ­ing theirs if we need to, or not if they ask us not to.