Catastrophic Accidents: Prevention and Handling - Workforce Safety and OSHA Webinar Forum

Edwin G. Foulke, Jr. presented a webinar entitled "Catastrophic Workplace Accidents: It Could Happen To You," on September 16, 2014.

Catastrophic Workplace Accidents: It Could Happen To You
No employer ever expects a catastrophic workplace accident or incident to occur at their work site. However, while the American workplace is safer than ever, hardly a week goes by without a news report concerning a plant explosion, a chemical release or a fatality arising out of a workplace accident. The fact is that these events do happen, and it is critical that you have an effective response plan in place.

Reacting after the fact will only complicate things…poor response to the event, fragmented and inconsistent communication both internally and externally, difficulty and delays in getting operations back on line. Clearly the best approach is to have a good overall EHS program to avoid such incidents AND to have an effective response plan in case something catastrophic does happen. But how best to prepare?

Topics covered:

• The essential components of a comprehensive program both from a regulatory perspective as well as a “common sense” perspective.
• Some catastrophic incident response best practices that you should consider.
• Some practical and proven strategies for establishing an effective internal and external communications process.
• How to determine and assure all required notifications occur.
• Who are the key contacts that you need to identify, both within in the company as well as with first responders and community organizations.
• How to design an effective response plan and who needs to be involved.
• Some proven strategies for evacuation and other steps you can take to assure that the event does not become even more severe.
• How to evaluate processes and operations in order to establish comprehensive shutdown procedures.
• Some approaches for testing your plan and assuring that all involved personnel are properly trained and prepared.
• How to sensitively deal with families of employees impacted by the event.
• Some ways to identify and evaluate third party resources that might be helpful in your plan development, implementation, and evaluation process.