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Fire/Tornado Drills

nietranietra 134 Posts
in HR & Employment Law Vote Up0Vote Down
I recently took over the Saftey roll and today I went to our sheltered workshop to participate in a tornado drill. The majority of the drill went well (people went where they were supposed to be) I was shocked to find that once all areas checked in (employees assigned to check different areas of the building) they called an all clear and everyone went back to work. No attendance was taken to make sure everyone was accounted for.

Am I over reacting? Is roll taken where you work? But before you answer please understand that our Sheltered Workshop is a mfg environment for persons with Mental Retardation/Mental Illness/Physical Handicaps and today for instance we were serving approx. 50 persons.


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  • 5 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • SamanthaQSamanthaQ 83 Posts
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    Nietra - to answer your question, yes roll is taken where I work in the instance of a tornado drill or fire drill (or the actual thing). I work at a financial institution with our main office being about 70 employees. We have a documented disaster recovery plan that includes what we will do in the event these things occur. Monthly the HR department provides by e-mail a current staff listing for each supervisor of their own staff for the purposes of roll call should one of these events occur.

    Also part of our plan has each manager designated to check various areas of the building (2 story building) to notify and clear everyone out.

    Every year we have at least one or two days of actual bad storm weather where we've had to take everyone to the basement and do roll call. We've actually had a fire too but that was 8 years ago and everyone got out. Someone just happened to remember to go tell the staff that worked in the basement counting ATM deposits to get out - otherwise it would've been bad news for them. The fire obliterated our building! We learned a lot from that one.
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  • marcmarc 3,126 Posts
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    Your situation requires a bit more diligence than you might find in non-shelter environments. I would say you need to have designated sites to muster during such a drill and appropriate supervisors/managers should take a roll call at the muster site as well as when the all clear has sounded and folks have returned to duty stations.

    Since this is not a regular event, your folks could be more confused and more prone to panic with all the noise and whatnot.

    Is this something you practice with them? Seems like a school type fire drill training could help out here.
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  • nietranietra 134 Posts
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    No, we do drills. Actually they do one fire and one tornado monthly and the clients know exactly where to go and so do our employees BUT once they were where they were supposed to go no one conducted roll to make sure everyone was there. I went back to look at the drill review forms for the last few years and no where does it mention a roll call or that someone didn't report to where they were supposed to be. I'm concerned that someone may get frightened and hide under a table and go un-noticed until it may be too late.
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  • marcmarc 3,126 Posts
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    Exactly.
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  • POPEYEPOPEYE 958 Posts
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    We have an EE roster posted at every emergency exit and we have specific gathering areas for all departments. We run 7-24 with 4 shifts / 3 depts.
    The roster is broken down by shift and the first person out the door grabs the roster and roll is called for everyone.
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