| How to practice an emergency drill |
Description
In November 2009, the quarry ran an emergency drill involving five employees and around 20 members of the Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service. The event had been arranged between site management and the fire service without the knowledge of the quarry’s own employees.
A mock drill was run, with a team consisting of a fitter, a quarry operative and a lab technician.
At 14:15 hrs with no prior warning, they were handed a situation card and the group was told to follow the cards given to them and act as they would in an emergency situation.
Two dummies were used, one with a broken leg was lying on a platform and another was suspended by a harness from one of the top levels of the plant.
Members of the team were timed on the effectiveness in calling a first aider and the emergency services, once they had decided that they could not gain safe access to the harnessed dummy. When the emergency services had been called, the team remained attentive to the dummies and did everything that would be expected of them in a real situation.
A sentry was in place to direct the rescue services to the incident’s location and the fire services then provided a mock exercise.
This was the first time that the fire service in the area had used a quarry site for an exercise, and the first time that a ‘level 3, working at height exercise,’ had been completed outside of their own station. The fire services were impressed with the professional approach shown by everybody and the acting first aider claimed it to be a very useful experience to test the emergency procedure in a practical situation.
Benefits
All site employees were made fully aware of the emergency plan and what part they would play in ensuring it was effective
A close liaison with the local emergency services has been developed with potential benefits in training and in improving the fire brigade’s knowledge of the site
Developing site employees’ ‘buy-in’ to safe procedures on site.
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