“By failing to plan, you are planning to fail…”

Emergency Preparedness 101

Its 7:00 p.m, you just got home after a long day of work. You sit down to dinner with your wife and kids. The phone rings. You find out that the apartment complex you manage just had a fire that took out at least 10 apartment homes.

Now what???…You can be afraid of the situation or you can be ready.

It could be the event that no one wants to think about, or worse, “THE ONE THAT NEVER HAPPENS TO ME”.

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), there was a civilian fire death every 175 minutes and a civilian fire injury every 31 minutes in 2009. With the most recent disaster happening in our backyard (San Bruno), it is surprising that many property managers don’t have emergency preparedness plans in place to handle unplanned events.

Your immediate decisions following a property loss will have a massive impact on your apartment community in the days and years to come. Without a proper plan in place and having the key individuals within your organization trained, the chances of making poor decisions greatly increase.

Generally, once a property manager has been through a disaster, he/she looks back and realizes that an effective emergency plan would have saved time and money.

Pre-Planning
The creation of an emergency plan goes far beyond a safety manual that will eventually collect dust at the top of a shelf. A fully functional plan will implement key components that work in a variety of different situations including proper communication, knowing your preferred vendors, and understanding their roles within each emergency. Lastly, Practice! Practice! Then Practice some more!

Executive Influence
Business continuity is important to the entire company, not just to a local community. The importance of continuity has increased dramatically since 9/11, and should now be an upper management question. The catalyst for the creation of an emergency plan may be spawned by an event or an individual within the organization. Executives in organizations are now beginning to realize that their involvement is crucial to the effectiveness of an emergency plan, and directly influences the sustainability of the company in the future.

Some executives that are not involved in emergency plans tend to believe that there is no real return on investment for the planning and preparation of an emergency. Emergency plans are then seen as a “low priority” item or an insurance policy for an unlikely event.

Be very specific when proposing emergency plans and training to your executives. Be prepared to answer cost and timeline questions up front. Use a recent incident or occurrence that your property has incurred, and how a functional plan could have saved you X amount of dollars.

Emerging trends in the market show that executives are more active then ever in creating emergency plans. This top down approach has created more attention to detail and accountability when these documents are being established.

Response
Anybody can be a leader, and unprecedented events demand unique leadership. It does not take a fancy title to have a stoic presence during a crisis. Some companies may have internal protocols on who makes the ultimate decision, but remember to empower your employees because this will have a positive influence on the process in which the emergency is handled. If an employee is laissez fair during “drills” then they will not be a “leader” or person you can depend on during an actual event.

Communication
With recent catastrophic world events generating a growing number of emergency plans, the demand for reliable and accurate information has increased. Effectively managing a crisis depends enormously on staying in constant contact with city officials, vendors, management, employees, owners, and tenants.

The success or failure of a notification is based on the ability to deliver a message to the recipient in the required time period with accurate information. Social networking is becoming the most efficient and sometimes accurate form of communication. During the most recent fires in California, Facebook and Twitter were very common sources of information for authorities, property owners and managers along with tenants.

Having an up to date internal social network can also be used in day to day marketing or sales of apartment homes. Keeping your social networks up to date will gain credibility and create value for your tenants when fact finding during an emergency.

Recovery
In pre-planning and response, we tend to focus only on the initial emergency. The most forgotten and in some cases most important aspect of getting your tenants back in their homes, is the recovery stage.

You should find yourself asking these questions?

- What steps do we need to establish to create a critical path or time line?
- How serious is the loss and how will this effect my occupancy rates?
- How and when should my tenants contact their insurance company?
- What is my obligation to the tenants throughout the recovery process?

Tenants
A fire, flood, or earthquake can cause catastrophic damage to apartment communities. Tenants may be put out of their homes for weeks or months. Generally, insurance policies will have limited Assisted Living Expenses (ALE) for your tenants. Important items like ALE, should create more of an emphasis on expediting the recovery of your building. This should be emphasized in the pre-planning implementation and during the response of an emergency.

Conclusion

Don’t assume that it will never happen to you, but also do not get lost in trying to plan for every possible event. Getting lost in analysis and research can cause you to loose sight of the overall goal in planning for response and recovery after an event. Create a standard emergency plan that will suffice for any type of disaster. The basic document you create will be the building block for more event specific plans.

The purpose of the planning preparation and implementation of a proper guide is to be sure that all the key players in responding to emergencies are fully prepared. The more that your tenants, vendors, and staff know what is expected of them during an emergency the more likely they will be able to respond in a positive manner. Encourage tenant participation in Neighborhood Emergency Response Training (NERT) or Community Emergency Response Training (CERT) along with being involved in your managements plan.

The benefits of having a fully functional emergency plan are infinite. These documents need to be clear, concise and ever changing. This may lower your tenant and employee turnover and give you a competitive advantage in the market place.

So, after a long day of work, are you prepared to take that call???

“Your Partner in Preparedness”

Ryan Rusler
Account Manager
Har-Bro Emergency Services