Property Profiles for Emergency Planning

The following excerpts are from IREM’s publication, Before Disaster Strikes: Developing an Emergency Procedures Manual, Third Edition (IREM Copyright 2005):   

Residential Properties

Emergency procedures for a residential property must take into account the resident profile. Having answers to the following questions about your residents before the planning process is started should be helpful.

• What are their ages? The overall age range? How many are elderly?
• Are there small children—infants and toddlers? Teenagers? How many in each age group? Which units do they occupy? Are the children alone during the day or evening? Can their parents be reached in an emergency?
• Are any residents disabled? What is the type/extent of the disability? Do they have assistive animals?
• Do any residents have skills that may be helpful in an emergency situation? Are any residents trained firefighters, police officers, active in the military or the National Guard?

While it may be possible to create a resident profile from information in residents’ leases and lease applications, the particulars needed to facilitate evacuation must be current. To collect information for a resident profile, you might use a form letter such as the Resident Emergency Information Request shown in the accompanying box. A section asking whether anyone has had training in first aid, CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), or use of an automatic external defibrillator (AED) could be added, along with a request to indicate whether the person would be willing to act in an emergency. If the letter is sent by mail (U.S. Postal Service), it may be appropriate to allow ten to fourteen days for a response. If distributed by hand on site, a week may be sufficient.

An alternate approach would be to compile the information and ask the residents to confirm or correct it. The information also has to be kept current to be useful. New residents might be asked to provide emergency information at the time of move-in. Established residents should be asked at least once a year to update their information.

The information requirement applies to any type of multiple-occupancy residential property. If the property is professionally managed, the property manager or site manager would likely have primary responsibility for compiling the resident information. Members of the board of directors of a self-managed condominium or homeowners' association should be familiar with the profile of their residents so that they can take appropriate action in the event of an emergency.

Emergency procedures for residential properties should include specific provisions for evacuating and caring for children, disabled persons, and the elderly.

Note: Resident profile information should be available for use by firefighters and other authorities who respond to an emergency so they can quickly determine where to assign personnel to provide needed evacuation assistance.

Office Buildings

The property manager should have profiles of building occupants to ensure safety and proper emergency planning, response, and evacuation. An occupant profile may include:

• The number of tenants in the building, including the number of people each tenant employs.
• The work and home telephone numbers, and cell phone numbers if available, of key tenant personnel or a business owner contact.
• What type of equipment or materials the tenants use or store in the building and if any of these are hazardous (e.g., flammable, toxic).
• Whether the tenants have many visitors during the day.
• Whether the tenants keep a significant amount of cash on hand.
• Whether tenants that occupy a full floor have a specific access code to that floor. The property manager should be aware of all floor access codes for use in case of emergencies.
• Whether any tenants conduct business around the clock or operate outside of normal business hours.

The property manager also needs to know whether and when any outside contractors such as cleaning, security, or construction personnel are working in the building. Because these people are not part of the established population of the building, they may be required to sign in and sign out as a security precaution and wear identification name tags.

Sometimes an office building will include a day care center operated or sponsored by a major company as a benefit to its employees or sought out by management as an amenity tenant. These types of facilities require special planning as noted in Chapter 9. In particular, the day care center’s procedures for evacuation and assembly should be coordinated with the building’s procedures so that parents working in the building can be united with their children quickly. It may be desirable to have parents report to their company’s point of assembly initially, so they can be accounted for, and then move to a designated area to which the children will be brought.

Increasing numbers of disabled workers are actively employed, and managers of office buildings need to know which tenants employ disabled workers, who those workers are, and what special needs the individuals have. Emergency Procedures for Employees with Disabilities in Office Occupancies from the U.S. Fire Administration provides specific guidance on planning, assistive equipment, and methods for providing assistance. It can be downloaded from the Internet at www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire95/PDF/f95043.pdf.

Often physicians and other medical professionals will lease space in office buildings that are not designed specifically for use as medical office buildings. When these professionals are among your tenants, emergency planning must account for their uses and special needs. Apart from disposal of hazardous medical wastes, there are potential problems from exposure to bloodborne pathogens.