Evacuation Planning for Long-Term Care
Imagine that you’re responsible for a long term care facility and that 10 minutes from now, a fire will break out in a building down the street from your facility. A firefighter will appear at your reception desk and say that he may need to evacuate your staff and residents, “depending on the toxic fume hazard.” Are you prepared for this? Many facilities aren’t, despite occasional fire drills and binders of directions.
Keep It Simple

Evacuation planning is gaining more attention in recent years, but that doesn’t mean that it’s being taken seriously enough. Evacuation planning is part of a good emergency plan. Unfortunately, many emergency plans are inadequate or even unsafe.
It’s important to note that you don’t need a huge binder to tell you how to evacuate your building. Often a small brochure containing the standard procedures is more useful than a binder.
You don’t want to start leafing through a binder when a fire threatens your facility. As for reviewing emergency response procedures during a power outage, forget it. You’ll have other uses for those flashlights—if you can find them.
Put It In Writing
You can print separate brochures for staff and residents. This is important as they need to know and be reminded of different things. Residents should be given brochures with large print and maps showing refuge areas and evacuation gathering sites.
You can include handy reminders and space for notes and personal information, including room numbers, addresses, and family contacts. Staff brochures will include space for reminders to forward the main telephone lines or to bring umbrellas and blankets.
Brochures can be designed to fit in a wallet, coin purse or pocket and are ideal tools for emergency orientation and procedural training.
Provide Reassurance
Your residents might be frightened or disoriented by an emergency. To restore their good morale, you should invite residents to a “closure party,” to talk about their experience during the emergency. Serve staff and residents comfort food refreshments and give everyone a chance to compare notes and celebrate the conclusion of events relating to the emergency.
Sometimes facilities need trauma counsellors to address an individual’s concerns or ongoing fears, but residents are not always disturbed by emergencies. After a fire near a Vancouver care facility that resulted in an evacuation, some residents told their caregivers that they enjoyed the excitement. “It was a nice break from the usual TV game show,” said one resident.
Is Your Plan Unsafe?
You now have only three minutes until that imagined fire breaks out down the street and you hear the wail of the sirens. Isn’t it time that you carefully review your emergency plan, including your evacuation plan?
It would be inexcusable if your untested plan led to injuries or negative health consequences to residents or staff when you tried to follow its instructions.
Best practice says that you should have your plans formally audited and tested regularly.
If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at guy.
This article was published in the
September 2023
edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:10 Issue:5
©2023 TMC Consulting