The Essential List

When the alarm sounds or the police arrive to tell you that you must leave immediately, some people are tempted to drop everything and head for the stairs. Others think that they have all of the time in the world and begin to gather everything.

If you take too much, your belongings might impede your passage to a gathering site or security zone and slow down everyone. If you take nothing, you’ll get to the gathering site without critical belongings. Here’s what you should bring, assuming that you can grab it quickly:

Basic Personal Items

Basic personal items such as your wallet, purse, backpack, prescription eyeglasses and cell phone should be at hand and easy to carry. You will need your phone to communicate with colleagues and family members as the emergency evolves. Keep your phone always charged to no less that 50% of battery capacity.

Protective Clothing

Other essentials include sturdy shoes and protective clothing – eye protection, a hat, coat, and umbrella. These items should be appropriate for prevailing weather conditions. During a heat wave, your hat should protect your head and neck from bright sunlight, while affording ventilation for coolness. Your eyewear should be sunglasses with UVA and UVB protection. Your footwear should be easy to put on quickly.

During a winter storm, however, your headgear should protect your head and ears from frostbite. You should wear gloves, a warm and waterproof coat and ski goggles if conditions include snow, freezing rain, or hail. This clothing should be close at hand.

Medications

Everyone should carry any medications—regular and limited-time prescriptions—that they need. These include drugs for common conditions such as:

• Anxiety and depression
• Hypertension and heart disease
• Diabetes
• Asthma and allergies
• Infections
• Arthritis and Rheumatism
• Pain from different sources

Fire Warden

If you’re a designated Office Fire Warden you’ll need more. You are often responsible for supervising evacuations and need equipment to support your activities. This includes:

• High-visibility safety vest
• Hard hat
• Flashlight & light sticks
• Crowbar or prybar
• Dust masks
• Radio—battery-operated
• First Aid kit
• Heavy-duty gloves and goggles
• A bullhorn or megaphone
• Appropriate footwear with flat soles
• Cell phone

Fast evacuations necessitate the immediate accessibility of this equipment for Fire Wardens. They should regularly check to make sure that all battery-operated equipment remains fully charged.

What Not to Bring

As they prepare to evacuate their offices, people will often attempt take away non-essential items with sentimental value. Family photos are frequently stuffed into purses and pockets. Trophies and other awards—desktop glassware and wall-mounted plaques—are grabbed and carried away as well. Framed diplomas, certificates, and licences are tucked under owners’ arms on their way out. Efforts to save such items are understandable, but people should not delay their exit to save a golf trophy or fading diploma.

Vital Data

All vital data—corporate, personal, and confidential—should be backed up offsite. These days, people rely on the Cloud for backup purposes, but there are other storage vehicles that are secure and equally accessible after an emergency. Many office workers use home-based systems to back up personal data; corporations back up operational data at secure offsite companies. You should review your backup data storage measures semi-annually to ensure that they are robust, comprehensive, secure, and easily accessible. Confident that you will have full access to your backups after any kind of emergency, you can concentrate on making your evacuation safer and faster. And nobody will be tempted to carry a hard drive out the door to save valuable data.

Know Two Exits

Everyone in your office should know at least two ways to exit your building. Posting a floor plan with emergency exits marked is not enough. Evacuation drills are necessary because they give employees a clearer idea of where they should go to reach safety. Drills also remind them that they should prepare themselves for different weather conditions since evacuations can take place anytime. What employees should take with them includes not only equipment, but also an awareness of the kinds of preparedness needed for a wide variety of physical conditions and circumstances.

In the end, we need to get ready to get out.

If you’d like to discuss a mini audit of your emergency plan, or to comment on this article, please email me at guy.