Emergency Response and Crisis Management
Plans beat improvisation
Emergency response rests on written plans, clear roles, and practice. Know your site's emergency action plan: alarm signals, evacuation routes and assembly areas, shelter-in-place and lockdown procedures, utility shutoffs, and the notification chain. In any incident the priority order is life safety first, then incident stabilization and property protection, then preservation of the scene.
Roles
You will most likely secure an area, control access, direct people, communicate, and document - not run the whole response. Follow the incident command structure: one person in charge, a clear span of control, no freelancing. Report facts to the command post or your supervisor and return to your assigned task.
Specific events
Fire: evacuate, use stairs, never elevators. Severe weather: move to interior rooms away from glass. Medical: activate EMS, give only the first aid you are trained and equipped for, protect the scene. Active threat: follow your training - avoid, deny, defend - and do not confront without training and direction.
Traps
Running toward an unknown hazard without information or protective equipment, abandoning an assigned post to 'help,' failing to account for visitors and contractors, and skipping the post-incident debrief.
Rule of thumb
Secure, notify, act within your training. If you are unsure what to do, do the thing that protects people and report immediately.