Dresser Utility Solutions has been a leading worldwide manufacturer and marketer of highly engineered products for critical infrastructure in the global utility and industrial sectors for more than a century.
Utilities are accustomed to responding to emergency situations out in the field and train intensely to do so. But just as important is training an emergency response team, or ERT, that can quickly respond to in-house situations, including injuries to employees, fires, natural disasters and more.
I have been an instructor for the American Red Cross and the National Safety Council since 2004 and have been involved with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for more than a decade. Dresser Utility Solutions is based in Harris County, Texas, which, thanks to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and extreme-temperature events, has been declared a natural disaster zone more times than any other county in the United States. It was inevitable that I would be actively involved in rolling out a business best practice by leading an ERT at Dresser.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency, we all should have a plan to identify risk, minimize the impact of disasters and minimize potential losses. Then, going beyond an ERT is a CERT, or community emergency response team. Administered by FEMA, the CERT program is designed to educate volunteers about disaster preparedness for the hazards that may occur where they live. It offers a consistent, nationwide approach to volunteer training and organization that professional responders can rely on during disaster situations, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks.
Having an ERT at your facility may be particularly important if you are in rural or urban locations more than 10 minutes away from professional help. An ERT’s job during a medical emergency is to assess the severity of illness in the form of triage and take care of a sick or injured individual until paramedics arrive on the scene or the individual can be transported to a hospital.
Since some utility companies may be in remote or hard-toidentify facilities in industrial parks, sometimes an ERT’s duty can be as simple as flagging down first responders and clearing a route to the victim.
Typically, an ERT is trained in basic skills such as first aid, automated external defibrillator use, CPR and awareness of bloodborne pathogens, so they can avoid exposure to infections. Fire training provides the team members with practical skills on how to use a fire extinguisher and educates them on when it is appropriate to run and let the sprinkler system do its job.
An advanced ERT undergoes an annual “Stop the Bleed” class, which delivers lifesaving skills on how to use tourniquets. In addition, the team learns how to perform a 30-second head-to-toe health assessment (triage) to rapidly determine if a person has a lifethreatening illness or injury that requires a call to 911.
Year-round training can be supplemented through tabletop exercises. One example with Dresser’s ERT is an exercise in which 25 different patients and their injuries are written on cards, which are then spread out on a table. The ERT is divided into teams of five, and each team is given five minutes to triage the 25 patients and sort them into groups of “immediate assistance required,” “delayed assistance required” or “deceased.” A score is assigned for each decision.
As well as continuous theoretical training, an ERT should perform orchestrated safety drills every year and engage in post-drill analysis. To make a drill as lifelike as possible, moulage and fake blood can be used to create realistic-looking injuries and wounds. The idea is to place the team members under stress to assess how they react. No one is immune to fainting at the sight of blood, so it is important for the ERT to learn how to quickly push past the shock of seeing real injuries, mentally tap into their training and engage in useful action as soon as possible.
Organization-wide drills led by an ERT are also important for engaging your entire company. Every year at Dresser, for example, we perform a site evacuation. Last year, a smoke machine was used to fill the stairwell of the most convenient second-story exit. If any employees chose to exit through the smoke-filled stairway, they were met at the bottom of the stairs and informed they would have died from smoke inhalation if the scenario was real. These dramatic drills are designed to help people remember the right thing to do through learning from their experiences in a very visceral way.
FEMA’s CERT program is an eight-week training course on basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization and medical operations. It is available to anyone thanks to a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. CERT-accredited individuals are provided with a backpack of emergency response supplies and an ID badge, which identifies their basic level of training and is recognized by professional emergency response teams. ERTs can also be CERT-accredited.
The process is fairly straightforward. I became affiliated with the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and CERT in 2005, during a Hurricane Katrina disaster response. I attended the Harris County CERT training class, became an instructor and progressed to president of the Cypress-Fairbanks CERT community. Recently, I reached out to the local fire marshal’s office with the desire to get Dresser’s ERT CERT-accredited.
CERT training was delivered to the ERT on site. Harris County’s Homeland Security office staged a tornado disaster drill, and our ERT had to react. The office assessed the drill and provided valuable feedback. Thirteen victims with differing levels of injuries were featured, with the ERT tasked to assess all the injuries, transport the victims, carry out head-to-toe assessments and administer first aid. The team was able to identify the worst victims of trauma and get them on the ambulance first. Ultimately, the ERT was granted its CERT accreditation.
While an ERT equipped with basic skills such as first aid, CPR and defibrillator use is a good place to start, advanced training is designed to give people the confidence to intervene and help in an emergency until the professional first responders arrive. This interval of time can be vital.
Although only freshly CERT-accredited, Dresser’s ERT is already making a difference in the wider community. A member of our ERT was driving home recently and witnessed a motorcycle accident. Because of his training, he was able to provide first aid, keep the scene safe, stabilize the individual and remain with him, monitoring his condition until the ambulance arrived.
The participants of an ERT should be prepared to go all-in. At Dresser, if any ERT member does not participate in 80% of the activities, that person is dropped from the team to ensure that everyone is performing at the same high level. When people throughout the organization see what the ERT does and the dedication of those involved, they can’t help but want to be a part of it. I have a waiting list of people who want to join.
Seeing an active and engaged ERT gives all employees throughout a company a sense of security. Annual Safety Days led by the ERT can also be fun, engaging ways to expose people to lifesaving techniques.
Granted, there is a significant investment of time required for the initiative and training certification, but a far-sighted management team committed to health, safety and environment concerns will support it. Everyone throughout the company and within the wider community benefits when attention is given to emergency response.