The emergency exercise - the unloved child

Regular emergency drills in companies increase the safety of employees and help to preserve company assets. Paragraph 10 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act also enshrines such measures in law. Nevertheless, the drills are one thing above all: as popular as diarrhea during the vacations.

Emergencies can be triggered by various events; in electroplating plants, these are usually explosions, fires or accidents involving hazardous substances. There are also external threats: earthquakes, lightning strikes or severe storms threaten the safety of people and systems. In short: emergencies are unforeseen situations that endanger the lives of people and animals or the existence of assets.

When an emergency occurs, various measures must therefore be taken to bring people and possibly animals to safety and to minimize material damage. Emergency drills are part of these measures. The VdS recommends annual fire drills (VdS 3412: Galvanotechnische Betriebe - Gefahren, Risiken, Schutzmaßnahmen from 2018). Due to the increased risk potential, all electroplating companies should carry out a fire drill with the participation of the fire department at least every five years. Annual tests of the emergency plan are mandatory for companies in the upper class of the Major Accidents Ordinance.

It all starts with the emergency plan

These exercises are the practical implementation of the emergency plans that should be in place in every company. These in turn are drawn up by an emergency management team and apply to specific events such as power failure, fire, lightning strikes or, in our modern age, hacker attacks on IT or production control systems.

The emergency team usually and sensibly consists of a group of people who are qualified for this task. It is advantageous if this (company-internal) group also obtains advice from external consultants, for example from the authorities, the fire department, the THW or specialist companies.

This emergency plan forms the basis of the emergency exercise. The document should contain all important information on how to proceed in an emergency situation. In particular, this includes information on extinguishing and decontamination facilities, the layout of escape and rescue routes and the organization of first aid. The emergency plan should be clearly displayed in the company. It also serves as training material for employee instructions. Company emergency management includes appointing first aiders, fire safety officers and fire safety assistants. In the emergency drill, they take on important tasks such as carrying out life-saving measures in the event of an accident at work until the emergency doctor arrives or evacuating the building safely in the event of a fire. Emergency drills should be announced the first time and then carried out unexpectedly.

In most cases, the aim is to evacuate the company quickly and completely. However, as it is expensive and also makes little sense to shut down the entire production just because there was a short circuit in the electrics in the shipping department, for example, professionally prepared emergency plans also provide for other, less extensive measures, such as switching off certain machines and systems, closing fire doors or evacuating individual rooms, floors or parts of the company. In an emergency drill, these measures are practiced under conditions that are as realistic as possible. The scenario of a fire is often used because it is easy to simulate.

Emergency drills should be based on the actual conditions on site. For example, does the company work with highly flammable or toxic substances or are there areas that are particularly at risk? The planning of the emergency drill can start there and assume an incident in these zones.

An emergency drill will only be successful if it is carefully prepared. Structures must be created for this. Personnel structures are, for example, those employees who assume command and responsibility in the event of an emergency. This management team determines the emergency and decides what measures are to be taken. It is responsible for raising the alarm and instructing the relevant people in the company what to do. Ideally, fire safety assistants and/or evacuation assistants have been appointed and regularly trained. Supervisors also require regular training in these areas.

Each fire safety assistant or evacuation assistant is responsible for their own area. Their most important task is to help the people in their area of responsibility to save themselves. They gather people around them and guide them along the marked escape and rescue routes to the designated assembly points. They must pay particular attention to people with restricted mobility, such as older employees or the disabled. For an emergency drill to be successful, the number of evacuation assistants or fire safety assistants must be proportionate to the number of people in the building. Appointing and training just one fire safety assistant and one evacuation assistant in a company with 100 employees is therefore far from sufficient. Experts assume that there must be one evacuation assistant for every 15 employees, and a sufficient number of deputies should also be considered.

Not all emergency drills are the same

When it comes to emergency drills, there are also different levels of escalation. These range from pure simulations to large-scale exercises, whereby external emergency services such as the Red Cross and fire department are also involved in the latter. Of course, the authorities must be notified well in advance of such a large-scale exercise. The following distinctions can be made:

Theoretical procedures

Reviews of plans and documents, plan meetings. Here, plans developed on the basis of concrete scenarios are theoretically run through and checked for their functionality. This includes staff exercises in which cooperation within the crisis team is practiced.

Practical exercises

Technical tests are used to check redundant infrastructures such as servers, power supply or production components. When simulating scenarios, processes are tested to see how well alerting and escalation work or how efficiently a crisis team works. Continued on p. 1110

In an emergency or full-scale exercise, all participants - including emergency services and authorities - are involved in a realistic exercise.

The individual exercises vary in complexity. While the theoretical tests only tie up the time capacities of a limited group of people, the practical tests involve complete operational processes. Experts expect an initial emergency exercise to be planned three to six months in advance.

An emergency test in an ideal scenario

For tests and exercises that could disrupt or hinder operations, abort criteria must be defined beforehand in case of unforeseen incidents. This would be the case, for example, if an exercise lasts so long that the necessary personnel are no longer available to ensure the safety of production or if tests of the IT infrastructure would affect normal operations.

When carrying out tests and exercises, employees take on certain tasks according to their role:

• The exercise author designs and describes the scenarios
• A preparation team is responsible for creating concepts and scripts.
• The exercise leader - and in addition a core team - manage and coordinate the activities.
• On site in the production, the various helpers (first aiders, fire protection helpers, etc.) take on their tasks.
• The documentation is prepared by a minute-taker, other observers (fire department, police, etc.) can be called in.

The exercise starts with all participants being informed. Depending on the scenario, the participants are then guided through the test or exercise and their behavior is documented. The exercise leader ends the exercise and moderates the final discussion.

What comes after an exercise?

The most important aim of exercises and tests is to review the emergency measures and improve the arrangements made. Under certain circumstances, this can also lead to a previously agreed strategy having to be adapted. To this end, the exercise protocols and observations of those involved are analyzed and evaluated. All deficiencies are recorded in a report and recommendations are made to those responsible. They will then arrange for these to be rectified. The effectiveness of the measures is then reviewed in the next test or exercise. The following questions, for example, can be used to check the objectives of the emergency drill:

• Did everyone present in the area in question respond to the alarm?
• Was the estimated time to complete evacuation adhered to?
• Were all measures defined in the emergency plan taken?
• Did the evacuation assistants or fire safety assistants report properly?
• Did the first responders attend to "casualties" properly?

To ensure that the exercise provides a realistic picture of the behavior of those responsible and all those involved in an emergency, it should not be announced in advance. However, the exception to this principle is the first emergency drill that a company carries out. The following applies later on: an emergency drill with advance notice makes little sense, because the people involved then have time to prepare for it.

On the other hand, a planned emergency drill must be announced to the authorities well in advance. The fire department and police in particular should be informed so that a real alarm is not triggered by mistake. The company's management must also be informed about the emergency drill.

The inclusion of extreme weather situations in the exercise is controversial. While one side says that emergency tests should be avoided in heavy rain or extreme snowfall, for example, other experts say that industrial accidents do not take the weather into account.