What is an evacuation assembly area?
An evacuation assembly area is a safe zone away from a building, marked in advance, where your employees and guests can congregate in the event of an emergency evacuation, such as a fire. This should be at a safe distance from the building, it should be universally known by your employees, and it should enable your staff and guests to be accounted for after an evacuation. Exit routes to the evacuation assembly area should be lit, be marked, and be adequate to handle the number of evacuees you expect.
What should be in an evacuation kit?
For a business, evacuation kits should contain, at a minimum, water, equipment for inclement weather (such as ponchos if you live in a rainy area, or blankets if you live in a cold one), a first aid kit, tissues, dust masks, moist towelettes, alcohol pads, and a wrench and a radio. In addition, your office’s evacuation kit should have emergency numbers easily on hand and a checklist of current employees, so that you can account for all employees. If possible, there should also be a prepaid mobile phone, so that you can locate employees who don’t appear.
What should be in an emergency action plan?
Your emergency plan should analyze what emergencies might occur, and determine. These should include rare but foreseeable events, such as a fire, a power loss, or water outage, as well as the extremely rare but potentially catastrophic events, like a toxic chemical release. In that, you should have directions for you and your employees should do, and it should be planned in advance. This should include a description of emergency supplies available, your employees’ duties in an emergency, floor plans and maps of the affected areas, what should be done to notify your employees and guests, and how to contact emergency service providers.
How do I make an evacuation plan?
You should sit down with your emergency coordinator and your staff to prepare a list. Â It should contain:
(a) Which emergencies you might face, and how your team will react to a particular emergency.
(b) Your personnel, their emergency contact information, and their expected roles in an emergency.
(c) Floor plans, maps, and emergency supplies.
Check with your local fire department or the Federal Emergency Management Agency for ideas for how to prepare one, and you should conduct drills with your evacuation plan to knock out the kinks and to note potential flaws with your plan.
And if you need to mark your evacuation routes, SmartSign carries a full line of evacuation signs, at the lowest prices on the Internet.
