Hazards are a part of our everyday live, most of them are however dormant or inert. Every now and then, a hazard becomes active creating an emergency that may lead to injury, loss of life, destruction of property or extreme and sudden pollution of the environment. Emergencies may be caused by natural hazards including flooding, volcanic eruption, hurricanes, storms, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis and bush fires (Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General, 2009). Emergencies may also be caused by the intentional or unintentional acts or omissions of human beings, this may include fires, nuclear accidents in nuclear plants or nuclear waste dumps, industrial accidents, toxic chemical spills, military attacks & bombings, structural failure in tall buildings, dams and other major structures and outbreak of aggressive pathogens.
Most emergencies require people to remain indoors but some like fires, bomb-scares and toxic releases require evacuation from the affected buildings. The symmetry breaking of escaping ants theory has scientifically observed that leaving a building during an emergency is slower, more disorganized and more dangerous than an ordinary departure. It is therefore, imperative that clear universal rules and regulations be put in place to facilitate safe evacuation from buildings.
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It is for this reason that there are strict federal and/or state guidelines on how evacuations from buildings are to be conducted during emergencies. In the federal arena, with regard to work related buildings, these guidelines are set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal body established under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Residential buildings are usually superintended by state organs: for example, in the district of Colombia, emergencies are handled by the Department of Homeland Security (Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General, 2009). On the other hand, there are the private entities and associations that have their own rules regulations. One of the most influential among this is the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).
Fortunately, safety comes first both to the public and the private sector bodies and they have therefore been able to create a consensus on how best to harmonize their policies and procedural requirements in order to have a unified approach to safety with regard to evacuations. Ordinarily, the Federal government outlines what needs to be done and organizations like NFPA defines how it will be done (Chao & Henshaw, 2001).
All this is done in consultation with each other and is often reduced into memoranda and agreement. A good example of the same is the agreement establishing an alliance between Boston Regional Office Occupational Safety and Health Administration U.S. Department of Labor and the National Fire Protection Association: albeit the title is quite a mouthful, it outlines a coalition of intent and purpose between all the interested parties to create a unified front in preparing for and effecting safe evacuations from buildings.
A general overview of the agreed stratagems involve the following procedure: First, all buildings and related facilities should have a well prepared, planned and practiced evacuation strategy and format that is regularly tested and practiced in the form of drills. The plan needs to include inter alia a chain of command during emergencies, the specific exists to be used by specific people designed to give everyone the best chance to live the building as quickly as possible and finally an assembly point or assembly points where the evacuated individuals meet for a head count (Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General, 2009). Finally there need to be a tentative plan on what is to be done about those who do not turn up during the roll call after evacuation. These procedures affect Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) in my organization since when applied, it will help in ensuring that people are safely evacuated and the number of injuries brought to a minimum. Although facilities may be limited in the organization, following these guidelines helps in safe evacuation during emergencies.
One fundamental rule in all evacuations is the avoidance of panic since panic may cause more damage that the emergency itself through stampedes of even unsafe evacuation procedures like jumping out if windows. Whereas we all hope that emergencies requiring evacuations of buildings will not occur, it is important to learn and adhere to the rules pertaining to them as it may save lives in future.
References
Chao, E. L. & Henshaw, J. L. (2001). How to plan for workplace emergencies and evacuations: U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved from <https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3088.pdf/>
Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General (2009). Evacuation operational guidelines . Retrieved from <http://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/public-safety-and-emergency-services/emergency-preparedness-response-recovery/local-government/evacuation_operational_guidelines.pdf/>
