Experience on Emergency Response Guide

Emergency handling guidelines are never standard answers that must be followed verbatim. They are just "safety cushions" to help you quickly anchor priorities in chaotic scenes. Truly effective emergency logic is always a combination of "paper rules, flexible adjustments on site, and subsequent review and iteration." There is no one-size-fits-all template.

Last month, there was a false fire alarm in our office building. The two groups of people's handling methods corresponded to the two mainstream views on the use of guidelines in the industry. The new property manager held an emergency manual and knocked on the doors on the entire floor one by one to call for evacuation. When she knocked on the third door, she was kicked out by the boss who was holding a financing meeting. Before the evacuation was completed, the patrol post had verified that dust from the decoration downstairs triggered the smoke, and half of the floor was wasted. Brother Zhou, an old employee, immediately touched the alarm point of the fire host and asked the patrol post to go straight to the construction area on the 23rd floor for verification. At the same time, he only sent an early warning notice to companies on the 22nd to 24th floors. The problem was solved within 10 minutes without disturbing people on other floors.

From an objective perspective, both options make sense. Most of those who support "strictly follow the guidelines" are risk control personnel within the system and public services. Their scenarios involve public interests. Once problems arise in the private adjustment process, the responsibility cannot be shouldered at all. Even if the process is lost at some efficiency, it is the lowest-risk option. ； Those who support "on-site priority adjustment" are basically practitioners in private enterprises and service industries. Everyone must balance risks and operating losses, and there is no need to create additional trouble for the process. No one is better, they just adapt to different scenarios.

When I first started working in risk control, I was stupid. I printed out emergency guides for fires, earthquakes, and network security and posted them all over the corridors of the office area. When organizing drills, I also asked everyone to memorize the steps. Until I encountered the hacker attack on the server last year, my first reaction when I stared at the red monitor screen was that I couldn’t remember what the third article of the guide was. I only had three questions in my mind: Can users log in normally now? Has core transaction data been leaked? Will the current disconnection affect the settlement that is running? After completing these three questions, I turned back to the guide and found that the order of my actions was completely opposite to what was required, but in the end the loss was minimized. After that day, I suddenly figured out: the guide is like the traffic rules you memorize for a driver's license test. When you are on the road and the car in front suddenly cuts you off, or the road is slippery and cannot brake on a rainy day, you cannot read the traffic rules first and then apply the brakes. Those priorities engraved in your bones are what the guide really wants to teach you.

I reviewed the emergency guide for a friend's fresh produce warehouse before, and I almost laughed out loud when I read it. They ranked "rescuing important office documents" before "transferring cold chain reserve goods". When I asked, it turned out to be a common template used online and unmodified. This is actually the biggest misunderstanding that many people have about the guide: they regard the general template as a golden rule and do not consider it at all according to their actual situation. Think about it, the core asset of the fresh food warehouse is the warehouse full of cold chain goods. If something happens, go grab the report from the office computer first? Isn’t this nonsense?

Of course, I am not saying that we should completely abandon the guidelines and mess around. I have talked with the risk control colleagues of municipal water supply before. If you encounter a leak in the pipe network, no matter how big the leak is, you must first report to the dispatch center according to the process and get instructions before closing the valve. Otherwise, shutting off the valve privately will cause water outage in large residential areas. No one can bear this responsibility. You see, the usage of the guide is completely different in different scenarios, and there is no absolute right or wrong. A friend who works in education and training complained to me before, saying that the little girl at the front desk encountered a child who knocked his head, and strictly followed the guidelines to call the principal to report, and then call 120. As a result, it was delayed for twenty minutes, and the parents almost closed the store after they came. But another elder sister I know who runs a day care company encountered exactly the same situation. She first used a first aid kit to apply pressure on the child to stop the bleeding, and asked the teacher next to her to call 120 and call the parents at the same time. Then she held the child and ran to the gate of the community to pick up the ambulance. In the end, the child received two stitches and it was no big deal, and the parents even gave her a pennant. Who do you think is wrong? The little girl who followed the guide actually did not violate the rules, but she forgot that the underlying logic of all emergency guides is that people's safety always comes first.

Now I have changed our company's emergency guide, and the first item has been specially marked in red: "The highest priority of all emergency actions is to ensure personal safety. The rest of the procedures are for reference, and the order can be adjusted according to the on-site situation." I also deleted the "must be first/second/third" statements in the following entries, and only wrote down clearly the core risk points that need to be paid attention to in each scenario. To put it bluntly, the few pages written on the paper are a guide. If you really don't panic when something happens and can quickly grasp the most important things to do, then you have truly learned the guide thoroughly. You can't wait until the flood reaches your ankles. Are you still looking through the guide to find out "should you turn off the electric gate first?"