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All-building evacuation drill planned at Headquarters

The emergency response team at Headquarters recently completed training for evacuation monitors and updated evacuation plans for the complex in Boise.

It is appropriate during September – National Disaster Preparedness Month – that the team has planned the major evacuation exercise as part of the revised plan. When the signals sound Tuesday at 10 a.m., all employees will evacuate Headquarters and move quickly to their designated assembly points, explains Bryan Smith, emergency program manager.

Employees will receive a reminder e-mail message of the evacuation exercise. The intent, in announcing the drill in advance, is to allow employees to become familiar with the process and to plan in advance for it. Future evacuation exercises will be unannounced.

“We want all employees and monitors to be ready and know what is coming with no surprises,” Smith says.

“The other unique point is that we want to evacuate the entire complex all at once to see what kind of stresses and conditions this exposes. All of our past evacuation exercises have involved one building at a time, and not all at once.”

He plans to discuss with employees in the future silent alarms and in-house retention plans.

“Our draft plan is to alert employees silently for those cases where we need them to evacuate without an audible alarm.”

The other plan, he says, is to keep all employees and visitors in the buildings because of an outside threat that might make evacuation dangerous, such as a sniper attack – a hazardous “shelter-in-place” process.