As a business leader, you are responsible for creating and implementing emergency preparedness plans to protect your business. One of the many threats your business may face is a blackout: a power outage that occurs over an extended period of time. At first, preparing for a power outage may not seem daunting—your office will be fine without power for several hours. In fact, you and your employees may even enjoy time away from work. However, if this outage continues for a period of several days, weeks, or even months, and if it was caused by severe weather in your immediate area, including tornadoes, hurricanes, or flooding, then it becomes a crisis. Are you prepared to keep your employees and businesses safe without electricity, heat/air conditioning, or even adequate drinking water?
Continuous power outages and blackouts
There are many different types of power outages in various ranges of severity. First, there are transient faults, which occur when an area experiences a loss of power for just a few seconds to a few minutes, usually caused by a power line fault. Then there are “brownouts,” which occur when there is a drop in voltage at an electrical power source. This phenomenon gets its name from the dimming effect it has on the lighting in the area. However, it should be noted that voltage drops can cause problems with electrical equipment and its operations. Finally, a blackout occurs when an area loses power completely, either due to severe weather conditions or problems with power plants. Outages can be minor, repaired in just a few minutes, or they can be extremely severe, requiring several weeks of work to restore power.
The term “rolling blackouts” refers to when power plants shut down areas of the power grid in an effort to prevent a total blackout. Rolling blackouts can happen for a number of reasons, including problems with insufficient power generation (too many people using too much electricity at the same time) or are triggered by severe heat waves. Your emergency preparedness plan should include all of these scenarios.
Blackout Preparedness Plans
When preparing for a power outage and creating an emergency preparedness plan, you must first assess your risk. If your business is located in an area that often experiences severe weather, for example, if you are located in a tornado-prone area, or if your organization is located along the coast and is at risk of hurricane damage, then you should be aware of the imminent risk of blackouts.
However, whether or not you are in an area with a high risk of outages, as a business leader, you are responsible for creating a crisis management plan that your business can follow when preparing for a power outage. This plan should address preparedness, training, security, emergency supplies, backup power generators, and even recovery operations. Without an emergency preparedness plan, you may find yourself literally fighting in the dark.
Protecting Your Business: Crisis Teams and Business Preparedness
Assemble a crisis management team, made up of your most competent employees, and make sure they are fully informed of your emergency outage preparedness plan. It’s not enough to simply have a plan when preparing for a power outage – practice it. Conduct simulation drills and make sure everyone on your team is aware of the roles they need to play to keep your business and employees safe.
Because power outages are often caused by severe weather conditions, they can be sudden and unexpected. Therefore, your crisis management team must be well organized to help manage the panic that can arise from a sudden loss of power. Your emergency preparedness kit must be ready and able to communicate with an emergency message system that works without the use of external power; this can be through cell phones or radios, anything that is not connected to the electrical grid, such as batteries, solar energy, or devices powered by generators.
In addition, company-wide emergency preparedness and prevention for rolling outages may include limiting electricity use during the day, particularly the use of air conditioning or heating. If you know that nearby areas have experienced ongoing power outages, there are several things you can do to help your employees prepare for a power outage. For example, you can send out a company-wide memo advising employees to send important messages early in the day and not to make calls during peak hours. In addition, you can also place a message on your phone system with something similar to the following example: “Our area may be experiencing power outages and you may not be able to reach us at this number. Here is another number for you to use”, so that you do not miss important information during this time.
How to prepare for power loss
In addition to creating a crisis management team and preparing your employees, your emergency preparedness plan should address your electrical equipment when preparing for a power outage. This includes backing up all your electronic files, making sure you have backup batteries for cell phones or laptops, and purchasing backup power generators (if you don’t already have them). Even if you already have backup generators, it’s important to research how these generators work, including what they’re set to power when a power outage occurs, and for how long. For example, some generators can turn on automatically during a blackout, but others may need to be turned on physically.
Also, when preparing for a power outage, stay in touch with your property management team and property engineers so you understand exactly what will happen when a power outage occurs. Will your backup generators power only emergency lighting or critical services? If so, you need to consider other pressing emergency preparedness issues, including food safety, power servers that may require cooling before overheating, issues with security systems and alarms, and especially communication.
Shelter, Food, Water and Temperature Extremes
Because your environment can be affected by severe weather, you may need to use the office as a shelter for an extended period of time. If this is the case, your emergency preparedness plan should address providing food and drinking water. Many municipal water systems may not be able to decontaminate drinking water for long periods of time, so if you and your employees rely on tap water, it may not be safe to use for cooking, drinking, or brushing your teeth during a power outage. dragged on.
When preparing for a power outage, particularly an extended outage, make sure your business stocks all emergency preparedness supplies your employees may need during an extended stay, including but not limited to water, food rations , flashlights and first aid kits. , prescription drugs, blankets and flashlights.
Also, even in the short term, extreme heat or cold can affect the building and its employees. In the case of extreme heat, if your air conditioning is turned off, you should do everything possible to reduce this effect on your employees. Make sure your emergency preparedness plan addresses storing safe drinking water on site so you don’t get heat illness, heat stroke, dehydration, or heat exhaustion. Limit the amount of manual work your employees do, as you want to try to keep everyone calm. If they can’t stay cool, the heat can affect the way your employees can think – beware of mental disturbances and friction that often occur due to high temperatures.
If the power outage occurs during the winter, your emergency preparedness plan should address exposure to extreme cold for extended periods of time, which can cause your employees to panic. Keep your employees as warm as possible by gathering people together and making sure everyone wears enough clothing or can use emergency blankets. Watch for symptoms of hypothermia, frostbite, and any type of shock, and never use alcohol to warm the body, as it decreases the body’s ability to thermoregulate.
Carbon monoxide
When preparing for a power outage, it is important to be careful about the creation of carbon monoxide, particularly carbon monoxide caused by backup generators. For example, if you and your employees are snowed in during a power outage and rely on indoor backup generators, take care that these generators are not placed near a ventilation system, as this could cause monoxide to escape. carbon from spreading throughout the building. Carbon monoxide is odorless and tasteless, with slow-acting lethal symptoms; therefore, there is no real warning that your employees are suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.
If you are using generators or space heaters to heat the building when preparing for a power outage, be sure to properly vent the generators. Often smaller businesses purchase backup generators without knowing where to safely place them. Your emergency preparedness plan should include protecting your employees from carbon monoxide exposure: research how to use generators or space heaters in your building, because the consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning are deadly. Also, never use outdoor grills to heat the interior of a building, because the fumes can also be dangerous to your health.
Blackout Recovery Process
Your emergency preparedness plan should address recovery procedures once power has been restored to your building. You will need to have all your systems online without risking a power surge. You also need to make sure that your building is ready for your employees to return and that there are no electrical hazards for them to deal with, including downed power lines in the area or other issues. For the most part, your local power company will handle the repair and restoration of your power; however, your emergency preparedness plan should include a waiting period during your recovery time, as these companies may be short-staffed during this time. After a blackout, power companies will send engineers to the entire nearby area to make sure the grid is fixed, which means you may have to wait your turn for repairs.
For the most part, preparing for a power outage is a waiting game, and your responsibility as a business leader is to keep your business, your crisis management team, and the rest of your employees safe while you wait for power to be restored.