Emergency Preparedness: Got Your Ducks in a Row?

Just about anywhere you look in the OSHA standards, you’ll find some reference to workplace emergencies. Subparts E, H, K, L, and Z of the general industry standards, for example, all mention emergency preparedness and issue a lot of rules with which you must comply. 

The nature and scale of your emergency planning and compliance effort, of course, depend on the kind of business you’re in and the types of workplace emergencies you and your employees are most likely to experience.

But all employers need to have a plan that anticipates the worst and prepares employees to survive any possible event—even the most catastrophic.

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Checklists can enhance your emergency action plan and help keep your workplace and your employees safe in an emergency. See how with the award-winning Safety Audit Checklists program from BLR®. Try it at no cost and no risk.

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Critical Compliance Questions

Here are just a few of the critical questions you need to ask to make sure you’re in compliance with OSHA preparedness requirements:

• Do you have a written emergency action plan that spells out the what, when, how, and who of emergency response?
• Are all your employees familiar with your emergency action plan?
• Do workers have assigned evacuation routes and designated gathering places outside your facility?
• Have you established and tested effective communications systems for use during workplace emergencies?
• Do employees understand how to carry out any emergency duties they’ve been assigned?
• Do they know how and to whom to report workplace emergencies?
• Are your alarm systems in compliance with the requirements of 29 CFR 1910.165 (Employee Alarm Systems)?
• Do you have functioning emergency equipment such as fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems?
• Do you hold regular fire drills, evaluate performance, and retrain as necessary?

One-Stop Emergency Preparedness

Fortunately, all the details of all the OSHA emergency preparedness requirements are easy to access if you have access to the checklists in BLR’s Safety Audit Checklists. All in one place, you’ll find checklists explaining such critical preparedness topics as:

• Basic preparedness requirements, including employee training
• Exit routes and evacuations
• Fire safety
• Portable fire extinguishers
• Fire detection and employee alarm systems
• Emergency first aid
• Workplace violence
• Chemical spill containment
• Weather emergencies

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Examine the best-selling Safety Audit Checklists program for 30 days at no cost … not even for return shipping. Get the details.

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Ready-Made Checklists

 In addition to the section on emergency preparedness, Safety Audit Checklists provides checklists for a broad array of safety and health topics. All told, this best-selling program provides you with more than 300 separate safety checklists keyed to three main criteria:

• OSHA compliance checklists, built right from the government standards in such key areas as HazCom, lockout/tagout, electrical safety, and many more.
• “Plaintiff attorney” checklists, built around those non-OSHA issues that often attract lawsuits.
• Safety management checklists that monitor the administrative procedures you need to have for topics such as OSHA 300 Log maintenance, training program scheduling and recording, and OSHA-required employee notifications. 

Make as many copies as you need for all your supervisors and managers, and distribute. What’s more, the entire program is updated annually. And the cost averages only about $1 per checklist.

If this method of ensuring a safer, more OSHA-compliant workplace interests you, we’ll be happy to make Safety Audit Checklists available for a no-cost, no-obligation, 30-day evaluation in your office. Just let us know, and we’ll be pleased to arrange it.

Other Recent Articles on Emergencies
10 Keys to an Effective Emergency Action Plan
Emergency Preparedness Is Required, Not Optional
Is Your Workplace Disaster-Ready?
Taking the Pain Out of Weather Emergencies Preparation