How to use social media in emergency management

Smile presentation from Patrice Cloutier

Emergency Management in the age of social convergence from Patrice Cloutier

Hurricane Preparedness

Is Your Business Ready to Handle a Natural Disaster?

We’ve all seen the predictions for the year… Same ‘ol, same ‘ol… Like any other forecast, it’s really anyone’s guess whether it’s going to be a mild year or one for the books. Yet, you and your colleagues are not prepared to handle a hurricane… Neither is your company. Why? A mild season does not warrant any lack of planning on your part. When in fact, it should be the time you’re doing your best to plan for the worst. Is it the task of planning? Testing? The costs? Honestly, none of these should be a road block, much less an excuse to not plan.

 Having Hurricane Preparedness Procedures in place and having employees trained properly on these procedures will help eliminate panic & frantic behaviors and replace them with calm & rationale thinking, which in turn, will help save lives.  Emergium, Inc. is an ECM & SHORES company that specializes in emergency response and risk management to help companies create proper policies, procedures and training modules to overcome natural disasters safely and effectively. 

 Hurricane season is here and if your company does not have a written plan in place, now is a good time to get started.  During cataclysmic events proper training and written plans can help protect employees and the company itself. The company should have policies in place that protect the plant and equipment, details for each hurricane phase, staffing/employee policies, emergency supplies, protection of documents (hard copies & internet) and insurance coverage.

A good place to start is with a Staffing Policy. One should be in place which outlines who should go and who should stay. This policy should be posted in the front pages of the emergency manuals and employee handbooks.  There should also be a return policy for after the hurricane.  Make sure to tailor different alternatives,  just in-case there is a telephone outage.  Social media could possibly be used (twitter, yammer, facebook, etc…) to keep in contact. Compile an Emergency contact list & a 24/7 phone number of essential employees.  

Second, the facility, equipment , factory and plant need to be secured.  Make sure windows and the roof are in good condition.  Check all flood and security lighting and lights in the parking lot.  Find and secure all light weight and/or loose materials that could be thrown around during the storm.  Make sure emergency response equipment is working and ready for a hurricane (generators, testing & monitoring).  Check communication and computer equipment. 

Third, make sure the company has the proper amount of Emergency Supplies:

1.      Water & Food

2.     Candles & Flashlights

3.     Batteries & Lighters

4.     First Aid Kits

5.     Walkie Talkies

6.    Battery operated TVs

Just to name a few items

 Phase 1 – Preseason

BE PREPARED! Train employees on policies and procedures.  Gather all supplies needed and keep in a safe & secure area to be accessed quickly in the case of an emergency.  Check monthly all emergency equipment and make sure it’s in proper working order.  If your company does not have a plan in place NOW would be the time to implement one. 

 Phase 2 – Hurricane Watch

Make sure the exterior of the facility is secure.  Board windows, tape windows, close curtains and hurricane shutters (if available).  Make sure vehicles are in a proper place and that they are secured. Release employees that will be staying for the hurricane to secure their personal belongings and check with their families.  When these employees return back to work release all unessential employees; remind them to check with the return policy.

 Phase 3 – Hurricane Warning

Turn off all electrical equipment (computers, televisions, printers, A/C units, etc…). Move all interior equipment away from windows and secure in a safe place.  Make sure all essential employees check the policies and procedures manual and are aware of what they are to do and where they are to go to be safe for the storm. 

 Phase 4 – After the Hurricane

ASSESS ALL DAMAGES (take pictures, videos & written accounts of what has happened); doing this helps create a risk assessment and also is good for the insurance company. Risk assessments are essential in show companies what needs improvement and where.  Start cleaning up the facility and DO NOT turn on any electrical devices until power has been fully restored to your area and there is no standing water.  Check and make sure all employees return according to the return policy. 

 MAIN FOCUS:

This should be a no-brainer but make sure documents are secured.  Hard & soft copies should be secured at all times regardless of a natural disaster or not.  Creating a Sharepoint or Cloud network to store all documents electronically is the safest and most secure way of protecting the company and its clients.   ALL businesses rely heavily on readily accessible documentation; however, without proper storage of these documents, all this information can be destroyed and lost with one small disaster. 

 **This is simply a general guideline and every business preparedness plan will be different and customized to their needs.**

To learn more about how to get prepared or to check and see if you need to improve your current plan, click here  ,

Hurricane season IS here; don’t get caught in the storm unprepared, your life depends on it!  Emergium can help make sure your company and your documents are safe and secure to give you peace of mind.



KivuWatt Project

Turning “Killer Lakes” Into Life-Changing Energy

Sitting in the middle of a serene lake, in a homemade wooden dugout canoe with lights from the lanterns flickering while fishing at night for herring, is how many villagers make their living in Central Africa.  All the while, way down in the depths, lay a killer waiting to erupt and destroy everything in its path.  However, this “so-called” killer is also full of promise for millions of people needing it for life-changing energy. 

There are three exploding lakes, otherwise known as “Killer Lakes”, in the world and they are all located in Africa.  Two of the smaller killer lakes are located in West Africa in Cameroon (Lake Nyos & Lake Monoun) and have already erupted in the late 80s. Lake Kivu is located in Central Africa on the borders of Rwanda & Democratic Republic of Congo and is 3000 times bigger and has 350 times as much gas as Lake Nyos. Lake Kivu is at risk for eruption anytime within the next 100 years, all it will take is an earthquake, landslide or huge thunderstorm to stir up the bottom of the lake. Carbon Dioxide has been seeping into Lake Kivu for centuries from the volcanic rock beneath the lake.  The bacterium at the bottom of the lake has been feeding off this carbon dioxide turning some of it into Methane for centuries as well.  Over the past century the saturation of these gases has increased & in the past 30 years the saturation levels of these two gases have increased  to 40%, creating a very unstable environment putting the people, animals and the eco-system itself at risk.  Think of the lake as a soda can, once shaken up and the top has been opened it spews everywhere.  Now think about it on a larger scale and you are looking at CO2 suffocating millions of people and animals and the methane gas igniting and burning everything in its wake. This limnic eruption could basically cause the annihilation of animals, plants and thousands of villages surrounding its shores.

More than two million people live off the shores surrounding Lake Kivu and are hoping for many more centuries of being able to keep their culture alive.  Very few people and businesses have electricity because it is very expensive. This area of Africa has very few energy sources, causes them to use diesel fuel, which can be quite expensive as well.  ContourGlobal has chosen to step in and create the KivuWatt project, which will turn the methane gas in the lake into useable energy for the people of Rwanda.

The KivuWatt project will create a safer place for the people living on the shores of Lake Kivu.  ContourGlobal, a New York based company, will head the project and plan to use four barges placed out about eight miles from shore to extract the gas.  The barges will use risers, which are like giant straws, to extract the gases from around 1000 feet deep.  The methane will be extracted and siphoned to shore where the power plant is located and the carbon dioxide will be re-injected into the lake to avoid releasing greenhouse gases. Kivu’s fisherman hopes extracting the methane will be beneficial to them because they look forward to having electricity for the first time and they also hope it makes the lake safer too for generations to come.  Extracting this methane will give the people at Lake Kivu over 400 years of electricity. 

However, the Rwandan government team that is monitoring the project is worried it might change the chemistry of the lake and have a severe impact on the fish living in the lake causing ecological & economic problems for surrounding Rwandan villages.

Aster, N. (2011, November 23). KivuWatt: Powering Rwanda & averting disaster. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from Triple Pundit: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/kivuwatt-power-rwanda-lake-kivu-methane/

Boiko-Weyrauch, A., & Hugh-Jones, R. (2012, February 13). Lake Kivu gas: Turning an explosion risk into a power source. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from BBC News Magazine: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16394635

Glass, D. (2007, November 27). Exploding Lakes. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from Indiana Public Media: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/exploding-lakes/

McKie, R. (2009, July 25). Poisonous gas from African lake poses threat to millions. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from The Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/26/africa-lake-kivu-co2-gas

BlogThis!

Rigs to Reefs

Oil & Gas Industry Doing its Part to Presever Marine Life

The scene is like one viewed in a Jacques Cousteau film - Thriving sea life, thousands of fish swimming in and out of a reef,  declared as their own. The environment is booming with life. Some oceanographers would give anything to study it, photographers would kill to shoot it and environmentalists would say it’s a haven which needs to be preserved. This reef is… an oil rig? That’s right! An oil rig, the main tool of the evil oil industry, is a home to thriving sea life.

Many people assume that the impact of offshore oil rigs on marine life is devastating but, in fact, it is quite the contrary.  These active and decommissioned rigs provide a safe haven and plentiful habitat that would otherwise be nonexistent from the Gulf’s ecosystem. 

Thanks to the "Rigs to Reef Program", which is implemented in all five states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, these eco-friendly rigs have become a permanent fixture to help sustain and strengthen marine life, in turn, saving the industry millions of dollars a year.  Before the program started, in compliance with federal policies & procedures, countless oil rigs had to be disassembled and towed to shore within five years of the decommission process.  This destruction caused a devastating impact on the marine life.  Some of these rigs would be up for years then immediately torn down wiping out an entire habitat of marine life, which was more damaging than a year’s worth of commercial fishing. 

 The owner of each decommissioned rig that participates in the "Rigs to Reef Program" donates 50% of the money that was saved to that state’s artificial reef program and even after this hefty donation they still make a better profit than if they were to destroy the rig itself.  All in all, this program is beneficial to both, the oil industry and the marine life.

Click here to see a recent decommissioning of a Chevron rig for the Rigs to Reef Program.

American Petroleum Institute. (2011). Rigs & Reefs. Retrieved June 20, 2012, from API: American Petroleum Institute: http://www.api.org/environment-health-and-safety/clean-water/oil-spill-prevention-and-response/rigs-reefs.aspx

Kolian, S., & Sammarco, P. (2008, December). ecorigs.org. Retrieved June 20, 2012, from Removal of Offshore Oil & Gas Platforms: http://www.ecorigs.org/Platform%20Removal%20Brief.pdf

Emergency & Continuity Management as Part of Daily Operations: Automating Testing

So you’re plugging away at work when you hear the dreaded sound… The building fire alarm has been triggered - yep, another drill. You go through the exercise, as required. Everyone’s rolling their eyes and thinking, “Another silly fire drill, I have important work to do.” We all have thought it at least once, even those who’ve arranged the drill. Yet, if a fire was to breakout, we'd know where to go and what to do. It may be "silly", but these exercises work.

The above is a daily occurrence all over the world at businesses, schools, hotels and apartment complexes. It is not only required, but also a necessity in assuring safety of employees, contractors, visitors and customers. Therefore, these exercises are conducted to create an awareness reaction to such events. This, in turn, makes the case for making exercising the recovery of critical operations a daily operative task.

So how is this done? Should a business begin requiring 2 – 4 hour exercises daily? Not at all. In fact, an exercise can be far less intrusive than a fire drill AND take less than half the time in most cases. Here’s how:

Canned messages – For companies with integrated ENS (Emergency Notification Systems), this task is easier, but it can be done with a basic email system (Exchange, Gmail, etc). Simply create a series of messages that require a desired response. In most cases, a voting button can be used, but some clients of ours include a series of answers for the participant to choose from in order to get to the desired result. The answer is typed into the reply message and sent back to the test administrator. In the case of an ENS or a collaboration site (SharePoint) the admin can pull the results in a report generated by the program.

Surveys – Similar to the canned messages, but usually more detailed in administering. The admin will usually include scenarios and include a series of answers for the participant to choose from, again, to come to the desired result(s). SharePoint (or the like) are usually the preferred system, but email and an ENS can be used.

The above two methods are merely suggestions and can be expanded on, but the main point is this… Exercises CAN be conducted daily/weekly making emergency/continuity/risk management a part of daily operations WITHOUT being intrusive and time consuming.