Function: Communications
Communications are essential to any business operation. A communications failure can be a disaster in itself, cutting off vital business activities.
Communications are needed to report emergencies, to warn personnel of the danger, to keep families and off-duty employees informed about what's happening at the facility to coordinate response actions and to keep in contact with customers and suppliers.
Function: Communications
Other Functions
- Function: Direction and Control
- Function: Life Safety
- Function: Property Protection
- Function: Community Outreach
- Function: Recovery and Restoration
- Function: Administration and Logistics
Contingency Planning
Plan for all possible contingencies from a temporary or short- term disruption to a total communications failure.
Consider the everyday functions performed by your facility and the communications, both voice and data, used to support them.
Consider the business impact if your communications were inoperable. How would this impact your emergency operations?
Prioritize all facility communications. Determine which should be restored first in an emergency.
Establish procedures for restoring communications systems.
Talk to your communications vendors about their emergency response capabilities. Establish procedures for restoring services.
Determine needs for backup communications for each business function. Options include messengers, telephones, portable microwave, amateur radios, point-to-point private lines, satellite, high-frequency radio.
Emergency Communications
Consider the functions your facility might need to perform in an emergency and the communications systems needed to support them. Consider communications between:
- Emergency responders
- Responders and the Incident Commander (IC)
- The IC and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC)
- The IC and employees
- The EOC and outside response organizations
- The EOC and neighboring businesses
- The EOC and employees' families
- The EOC and customers
- The EOC and media
Methods of communication include:
- Messenger
- Telephone
- Two-way radio
- FAX machine
- Microwave
- Satellite
- Dial-up modems
- Local area networks
- Hand signals
Family Communications
In an emergency, personnel will need to know whether their families are okay. Taking care of one's loved ones is always a first priority.
Make plans for communicating with employees' families in an emergency.
Also, encourage employees to:
Consider how they would communicate with their families in case they are separated from one another or injured in an emergency.
Arrange for an out-of-town contact for all family members to call in an emergency.
Designate a place to meet family members in case they cannot get home in an emergency.
Notification
Establish procedures for employees to report an emergency. Inform employees of procedures. Train personnel assigned specific notification tasks.
Post emergency telephone numbers near each telephone, on employee bulletin boards and in other prominent locations.
Maintain an updated list of addresses and telephone and pager numbers of key emergency response personnel (from within and outside the facility).
Listen for tornado, hurricane and other severe weather warnings issued by the National Weather Service.
Determine government agencies' notification requirements in advance. Notification must be made immediately to local government agencies when an emergency has the potential to affect public health and safety.
Prepare announcements that could be made over public address systems.
Warning
Establish a system for warning personnel of an emergency. The system should:
- Be audible or within view by all people in the facility
- Have an auxiliary power supply
- Have a distinct and recognizable signal
Make plans for warning persons with disabilities. For instance, a flashing strobe light can be used to warn hearing-impaired people.
Familiarize personnel with procedures for responding when the warning system is activated.
Establish procedures for warning customers, contractors, visitors and others who may not be familiar with the facility's warning system.
Test your facility's warning system:
- Test communications often. A research firm discovered in a drill that its two-way radio system did not work, limiting communications between the Emergency Operating Center (EOC) and the Incident Commander (IC) to a single telephone line. The Emergency Management Group had failed to provide a backup radio for the EOC. Fortunately, this was discovered during training.
- Test alarm systems monthly. One company conducted its first test of a sophisticated alarm system 21 years after the system was installed. Rather than alarm bells, the system played Christmas music.
Last Modified: Tuesday, 21-Mar-2006 08:36:38 EST