Emergency Preparedness Week (May 2nd – 8th 2021)

As health and safety advocates, part of our role at Made Safe NL is raising awareness and
promoting education around hazard identification and being proactive in preventing illness or
injury in the workplace. While this awareness is critical to an effective health and safety
program, we all need to take the time to understand what to do if our prevention measures fail
and we face unplanned or unexpected events.

More commonly discussed workplace emergencies include fire/explosion, hazardous material
release and medical emergencies. But organizations sometimes overlook other crises that they
should have in their emergency response plan, including bomb threats, intruders, or more
recently – weather-related disasters or a pandemic outbreak.

As an industry, we have never faced what we have had to deal with this past year. First, we had
to address the complexities of Snowmageddon in the metro area, closely followed by the global
COVID-19 pandemic—both with tremendous negative impacts to our workplaces, placing
immense strain on every facet of the business.

Emergency Preparedness Week provides an opportunity to strengthen the call to action and
focus on being prepared and ensuring everyone in the workplace knows what to do when
emergencies happen.

Every emergency will have a different response depending on the situation. But four elements
of emergency management provide a framework around being prepared:

• Prevention: Policies and procedures to minimize the occurrence of emergencies
• Preparation: Activities and protocols to ensure the organization is ready to respond
• Response: Action to take when an emergency happens
• Recovery: Practices to resume normal business operations as safely and quickly as
  possible

To reinforce preparedness, we ask employers to commit to ensuring health and safety is a
priority in their workplace and for workers to be vigilant, and where necessary:

• Identify common types of emergencies that could happen in YOUR workplace
• Respond if an alarm is activated or an emergency occurs
• Ask your employer for more information and/or training if you don’t feel as prepared as
  you could be

It is the responsibility of every workplace to ensure their emergency preparedness plan is an
integral part of the health and safety program. We all want to go home healthy and safe to our
families at the end of each workday.

Work safe. Home safe. Every day.