Typical Evacuation Drills

To date, most employers will instruct employees on company safety policies. Some of these safety related policies include evacuation drills. Most employers will train new employees to exit the building along a specific route that would assemble the respective department in a specified “Muster Area”. At which time the employees would be asked to stay in this area until someone comes and notifies the group that it was safe to return to the facility. In addition, there typically is a designated individual that is responsible for taking the names of employees at each Muster Area. To date, most safety drills conducted at facilities in the United States never account for all of the employees during the evacuation drill. A safety representative can also be a roving SafetyNet™ station. By providing a moveable SafetyNet™ station, government facilities can change locations due to sniper attacks and Industry can utilize this feature in a Shelter-In-Place application.

This is due to the fact that the responsible people for counting at each station may be:

Caught up in the event
Sick
On vacation
On Break
At the doctor
Etc.

Many variables can cause confusion at best with current evacuation procedures. The SafetyNet™ System accounts for all of these variables to ensure accountability of the employees no matter where they exit the building or who is present the day of the evacuation. Furthermore, the SafetyNet™ System also accounts for varied manufacturing facilities and corporate offices. In a high rise corporate office structure, the SafetyNet™ System can be incorporated into the incoming phone system. Typically, most employees’ can call into the company and check their respective voice mail. With the new SafetyNet™ System, the voice mail prompts can be altered to incorporate the safety options. These additions would give you the options to enter your employee ID number and register that number directly into the SafetyNet™ System that would then account for the each employee’s safety.

A good example for this application would be the World Trade Centers tragedy. Due to logistics and space, Muster Areas cannot be defined. Using the existing phone systems would allow the employee access to the system and provide accountability during the evacuation.

During the evacuation process, if individuals do not log in, a listing will be generated and information will be displayed as to what department they were assigned and the location. This can assist local rescue efforts in the location of the employee’s that are missing. This will intern reduce the time in locating the individual or individuals still inside the facility.