What are the steps to prepare emergency response guidelines?

If you really want to make a usable and effective emergency response guide, the core must go through the four key links of risk assessment, framework anchoring, content implementation, and dynamic iteration. To put it bluntly, this thing is like a first aid kit at home. Don’t install those fancy things that are not needed. It must be real goods that can be used directly. The common templates copied are useless.

Two years ago, I worked on a pre-holiday stampede emergency guide for a business district in the city center. I didn’t rush to start writing at first. I spent a whole week in the business district’s monitoring room, counting how many people passed through each exit per minute during the weekend evening rush hour, which escalators tended to get luggage stuck, whether the fire exits of the snack street on the first floor were often blocked by take-out electric vehicles, whether the two surrounding roads would be closed during the evening rush hour, and how long it would take for the nearest police station to arrive at the scene. Many people make mistakes in the first step when making a guide. They directly search for templates from the same industry and modify them. As a result, the fire guide for the community is copied from the industrial zone and actually requires the owners to prepare chemical protective clothing, which is completely out of touch with reality.

After all these basics are understood, the next most important thing is to build a framework. In fact, there are always different opinions in this industry: some people think that the division of job responsibilities is clearer, which is suitable for scenes such as factories and laboratories with particularly clear boundaries of rights and responsibilities. Who is in charge of valves, who is in charge of alarms, and who is in charge of evacuation is clearly written.； Some people also think that it is more practical to follow the timeline of incident development, especially in crowded places such as business districts and schools. You can just follow the timeline to find out what to do before the incident, what to do in the first minute after the incident, and what to do when support arrived five minutes later. There is no need to find which position you correspond to. When I was working on a business district guide, I chose timeline logic. After all, it was so confusing that no one had the time to look up their own job responsibilities.

Once the framework is finalized, fill it with real goods. Don’t talk about “improving ideological awareness” and “strengthening emergency response”. Who will look at this when something really happens? When I was writing, I changed all the vague statements: instead of saying "evacuate the crowd as soon as possible", I wrote "holding a loudspeaker and standing on the 1-meter-high steps of Entrance 3, facing the flow of people and shouting "Please go to Exit 2 on the west side". Don't say "Don't panic, everyone" - when people are highly nervous, they will automatically filter out negative words, which makes them more likely to panic.” ； Even the emergency loudspeaker is placed in which cabinet at which post, and which buckle on the security belt the cabinet key is placed on is clearly marked. A small simplified version is specially printed so that every front-line employee can fit it in his pocket.

Don't think it's done once you've written it. I've seen too many units lock their guides in filing cabinets after they're written, and don't look at them for half a year. Surrounding roads have been changed, new fire exits have been occupied, and emergency contact numbers have been changed. None of them have been updated. If something goes wrong, it's all wrong to take them out. After we finished writing, we performed it twice with the security team and merchant representatives. During the first deduction, we found that the previously written statement of "the manager on duty will arrive at the central control room within 5 minutes" was simply not realistic. During the evening rush hour, the elevators from the ground to the first floor below were so crowded that the manager on duty had to run up the stairs. In 8 minutes, the rules were changed on the spot to "After the incident, the security guard at the nearest booth will take over the on-site handling first, and the duty manager will hand over the rights and responsibilities after arriving at the post." Later, on Halloween, when the escalator suddenly stopped due to the heavy flow of passengers, the changed rules were followed. The situation was under control in half a minute, and no one was injured.

To put it bluntly, the emergency guide is not a paper material used to deal with inspections. It is an operation manual that can save lives in the event of an accident. In the final analysis, all steps revolve around the four words "can be used and easy to use".