by Tim Coomer, Specific Software
In our local area, a radio commercial for a life insurance company seems to run about ten times a day. In a dramatic voice, the announcer explains that we all need life insurance for the “unforeseen.” It is exactly the “unforeseen” that causes so many of the severe and tragic workers compensation losses that our actuarial firm sees in the the analytical consulting projects we do.
You CANNOT “punt” on planning and training for foreseeable emergencies and catastrophes – because this is what is going to save you or mitigate damage when the significant unexpected event occurs.
While I sat in traffic recently and heard this commercial for what must have been the 1,000th time, I quickly ran through some of the “unforeseen” things that I’ve personally experienced in my lifetime. Have you ever done this? It is amazing how many things we all must confront in the normal course of life. Here are a few of the highlights for the ones that worked out well for me:
• Having at least 6 trips to the emergency room for injured kids (broken bones, car wrecks, head injuries – oh! the joys of parenting).
• Being the passenger in a high speed car crash. (The car was totaled – I was lucky to survive with recoverable injuries!)
• Having the doctor tell my wife and me that our unborn child had a 0% chance of being born. (The doctor was wrong – the kid is awesome.)
• Living through a house fire. (The house didn’t fare too well, but family did.)
• Confronting a home intruder. (I used my most intimidating primal scream!)
• And my personal favorite, which goes back a while – being chased by the neighborhood German shepherd when I was 8 years old!
Thoughts of these could-have-been disasters brings me to the question: How do you prepare for the worst possible scenario, the unexpected, and the catastrophe that could threaten your business? Some employers believe you can’t prepare and therefore don’t bother. However, I recently got another perspective on this when I had the opportunity to hear Rudy Giuliani speak.
Rudy is a great speaker. Watching him live is very inspiring. He is an effective story teller and, as you might guess, has some pretty amazing and powerful stories to relate. Rudy asked the question, “How do you prepare for the unknown?” Obviously, there was no way the city of New York could have prepared for the 9/11 catastrophe. While I am sure the volumes of studies done on the response find areas for improvement, the city of New York can be proud of how it dealt with this unimaginable scenario.
Rudy shared his theory on this: “Prepare for everything known and you will be prepared for the unknown.” He goes on to describe how the city had action plans for specific disaster scenarios. Each plan was divided into components and each component was then well researched, planed, and rehearsed. One example might be setting up a triage near a large industrial accident. Despite the extensive preparation that the city had undergone for various disaster scenarios, there was no plan for the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers.
When Rudy arrived on the scene, he began to direct all the city’s departments to pull components of other emergency plans together to create, on the fly, a custom response to the emergency at hand. Because they had planned for everything they could imagine and had their plans compartmentalized into specific function areas, they were able to respond to the unimaginable. While I cannot do this story justice as Rudy so passionately does, I can relate this to the importance of disaster planning for an employer. You CANNOT “punt” on planning and training for foreseeable emergencies and catastrophes – because this is what is going to save you or mitigate damage when the significant unexpected event occurs.
In more recent news, the US Airways captain who successfully protected the lives of his passengers and crew after losing both engines on his Airbus 320 after takeoff probably never trained specifically for so masterfully using the busy Hudson River as an alternative runway. But, if you read his resume you will notice that Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III had, in addition to his training as a pilot, extensive experiences related to safety and risk management. He had practiced, without doubt, thousands of emergency situations over his 40 years of flying. He had studied safety and participated in accident investigations. His training and experience also included glider flying – a handy skill when your Airbus becomes a 160,000 lb glider over one of the most densely populated cities in the country. So what was the payoff for the untold hours of training and emergency drills for theoretical situations that never actually happened? A miracle!
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Filed under: Safety
