By Christine Born

The fire alarm went off at 2 a.m. in the New Orleans hotel I was staying at a few weeks ago. I gathered my computer and purse, put on a robe and flip-flops (wondering if I should be taking the time to do this) and, before I opened the door, checked it to see if it was hot and looked at the floor map on the back. When I got to the elevators, people were milling about trying to figure out which hall to go down (it was a large hotel). I led them in the right direction and we headed down the flights of stairs, where we found many of the landings crowded with dirty trays and chairs. The alley exit door appeared to be locked so we entered the lobby. After wandering around, we finally asked the one staff member behind the main desk what was going on. She didn’t seem overly concerned and told us it was a false alarm that only went off on two floors. No one announced that over the PA system, which had loudly woken us and told us to leave the building immediately. No one told the people waiting outside with crying kids. The next morning when I checked out, someone else behind the desk apologized and said they had had a number of false alarms and were looking into them.

People often give lip service to emergency preparedness but how many of us really take it seriously? No one else I met had bothered to identify exits before they left their rooms. Emergency preparedness is a major consideration for meeting planners, right? We talk about it; we include force majeure clauses in our contracts; we get emergency contact information from our attendees. But, are we really taking it seriously?

“Few meetings have emergency procedures in place,” says Joan Eisenstodt, who raised the subject at a seminar she presented at Connect Marketplace in Louisville last week. “After 9/11, we thought our industry would rise to the top, then interest went down. With Katrina, [the attitude was that] it was only about New Orleans. People think ‘nothing bad has ever happened at our meetings.’”

Preparing for major disasters also seems beyond our capabilities. Hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks and now solar storms? According to a story in The New York Times, solar activity is yet another disaster in the making. It’s tempting to shrug off the possibility of major power outages resulting from solar storms. After all, how much can anyone prepare for such threats, whether climate related or manmade? Even promoters of races like the Mojave Desert race this past weekend that resulted in eight deaths and numerous injuries reportedly said they couldn’t afford the manpower to keep spectators behind designated safety lines.

What can you do? Start with making sure the meeting facility and hotels have an emergency evacuation plan that is well marked. Develop an emergency communication plan for staff and attendees. You need to make sure everyone involved in your event is familiar with the measures you have put in place — from the obvious but often overlooked need to make sure exit doors are not blocked in crowded meeting rooms, which was the case in a few seminar rooms at our own conference, to identifying where other exits are located. Then, work through other scenarios. Make sure food services have health plans and precautions in place to guard against food-borne illnesses. Identify the location and transportation plans to the closest emergency room. Include all information in the housekeeping session before every meeting. For more information, read Manage Risk.