A series of posts on communication and emergency management in the marine sector: part 2
Unlike many businesses where emergency planning starts and finishes with the evacuation of employees in the event of a fire or natural disaster, marinas have a wider range of emergency scenarios to contend with.
In the case of marinas, there are a number of factors which place added emphasis on the importance of emergency preparedness:
Potential for boat-fire spread.
Other potential fire sources. These would include fuel storage and dispensing facilities (including LPG storage), and other businesses within the site that may use dangerous substances such as paints, solvents, and other flammable materials.
Extremes of weather. Predicted climate changes point to a higher frequency of more extreme events which could challenge the design basis of a marina (wind strengths and frequency as well as tidal ranges could be above those designed for).
Good communications with staff, clients, visitors, contractors and many other stakeholders are very important in achieving good safety management performance. The complexity of a marina business does not make achieving this easy. The diversity of the intended recipients and the small ratio of staff to users mean this is not an easy task. As part of emergency planning, managers need to consider how they will communicate urgently with users, taking account of the possibility that important utilities, such as power supplies, could be affected.
For emergency management, text alerts are proven to be the most effective with a 98% open rate.
Beep enables you to send a text alert in a couple of clicks from any smart device or smart phone.
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