What are the steps involved in preparing an emergency response guide?

The core logic of compiling emergency response guidelines is not complicated. The essence is to understand risks, clarify rights and responsibilities, refine processes, implement verification, and dynamic iteration. There is nothing fancy and it is all based on real scenarios.

Don't just copy the general templates from the Internet, they won't work at all. When we helped the industrial park make an emergency guide for trapped people in elevators, we first searched for a popular template on the Internet to modify. However, we searched the property management company’s fault records for the past three years and found that half of the trapped people incidents in this park occurred during late night overtime hours, and there were only 1 person on duty on the property property. There was no way to "arrange two groups of personnel to comfort the trapped persons and contact maintenance within 3 minutes" as written in the template. In the end, the duty rules were simply adjusted, and emergency telephone numbers directly connected to the night duty personnel were posted next to the elevator buttons on each floor, which was more realistic.

After you have figured out all the potential risks, don’t rush to write down the disposal steps. You must first clearly define the rights and responsibilities. Last year, our street revised the Emergency Guidelines for Heavy Rain and Flooding. The reason was that it was not clear who was responsible for pulling up the warning cordon of the underground garage and who was responsible for notifying people from door to door to move cars. When there was an orange alert, the community and the property management were waiting for each other to take action, which almost flooded half of the cars in the garage. Later, when the revision was made, the person responsible for each node and the contact number were clearly listed. After the floods this year, the two warnings did not go wrong.

After arranging the rights and responsibilities, write down the specific handling actions. Don't make empty words such as "timely evacuation" and "proper handling". It should be detailed enough that untrained people can use it. For example, when it comes to evacuation requirements for elderly people living alone, don’t write “give priority to special groups.” Instead, write “within 10 minutes after hearing the warning, the floor leader of each floor will knock on the doors of elderly people living alone and disabled residents one by one, and use the steps to move them to temporary settlements above the third floor.” This way, the evacuation will not be out of shape.

Once the process is smoothed out, don't rush to print it out to the whole unit. You have to get front-line people to do a few small-scale deductions first, and then prepare some useful auxiliary materials. When we made a gas leakage emergency guide for a restaurant street, we initially wrote "turn off the valve and then open the exhaust equipment for ventilation." However, it was only during the simulation that we realized that sparks may be generated when the ordinary exhaust fan is started, which may easily ignite the leaked gas, so we quickly changed it to opening the doors and windows first for natural ventilation. Finally, the core processing steps were printed into a colorful card the size of a business card. The merchant owner kept it in the cashier drawer. If something goes wrong, he could take it out and follow it. It is a hundred times easier to use than a PDF with dozens of pages.

Don’t think that once the guide is compiled, it’s done. There’s no such thing as a once-and-for-all good thing. There have been many extreme weather events in the past two years. The flood emergency guidelines of many cities in the south have raised the warning water levels by 30 centimeters from previous years. After the epidemic, the emergency guidelines of many public places also added modules for handling public health incidents. It is best to have the people involved review and correct leaks every six months, or every time after dealing with a real emergency incident. The guideline must change according to the actual situation, otherwise it will be just a piece of waste paper for inspection if it is kept for a long time.

As for whether the guidelines should be written in more detail or leave enough flexibility, there is no unified conclusion in the industry. Most of the people who tend to write in detail are scenes with extremely low error tolerance, such as factories and hazardous chemicals warehousing. After all, every wrong action may lead to death, and the operation path must be blocked. ； Most of the ones that prefer flexibility are emergency scenarios for public areas and natural disasters. After all, when an accident occurs, the situation is ever-changing. You can't ask front-line personnel to get stuck in the process and wait for leaders to sign before evacuating. On the contrary, it will delay things. How to choose specifically depends on the applicable scenario.

To put it bluntly, a good emergency guide is never a performance material for leaders to see. It is a practical tool that can provide support in the event of an accident. Spend more thought when compiling, and you will reduce the risk when an emergency occurs.