Business Emergency Planning

Resources

Business Emergency Preparedness Planning Guidelines

Business and industry share with government the inherent responsibility for protecting lives and property.  Preparedness helps avoid or minimize loss of lives and property and can help assure continuity of production which is so important to the recovery of an area after a disaster.  Every business and industrial facility should be prepared to cope with the hazards and disasters of today's complex world. 

Business and industry emergency planning should be coordinated with their local emergency management agency.  In the City of Richmond it is the Fire Department Office of Emergency Services.  This assures coordinated and standardized efforts, and provisions for the fullest use of community resources as needed. Planning and preparedness measures taken to protect company employees and property, as well as those of its neighbors, should lessen the company’s legal liability, as well as reduce insurance costs.  It is imperative that the City of Richmond and local business and industry plan now - to survive - as well as recover effectively and efficiently from the next major disaster, together.  Mutual assistance agreements with other business or industrial facilities provide a means to ensure that additional resources will be available for use in emergencies.  These are the basic keys to community preparedness.  Every business and industrial facility should be prepared to endure the hazards and disasters of today’s world.  

In this section you will find a template to help you create an emergency operations plan and/or checklists to help prepare you business to survive and recover from a major disaster.  Your Business Plan will define actions to be taken to protect your business, as well as the community, during a disaster.  It will, just as the City’s EOP (Emergency Operations Plan), identify hazards that may impact your business, the overall emergency organization, responsibilities to be carried out by specific individuals, and checklists for each individual.  Documents, emergency forms, emergency call in procedures/memo, inventory list, and more can be added. 

Small companies may not need, or have the resources to develop, a complete EOP (Emergency Operations Plan), and may want to write an EAC (Emergency Action Checklist).  Large Companies (500 employees) who do not possess sufficient emergency response capability (fire, medical, security), may also opt for the EAC.  One major consideration in both these options is to coordinate your efforts with the Richmond Fire Department’s Office of Emergency Services, for a coordinated effort.  Your emergency plan should cover all four phases of emergency management; Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery.