It has been one year since we wrote our first blog about earthquake preparedness and given what has been going on around the world in the past 12 months we thought it would make a lot of sense to revisit the subject.
Living in a seismically active zone should make you more aware of earthquake preparedness and if you own and operate a business, earthquake preparedness is a necessity if you want to remain operational after the next earthquake. And there will be one.
It’s not a matter of if, but when the next earthquake shakes your part of the world and if you’re not prepared it could be an extremely costly oversight. As we saw in New Zealand and Japan recently, you just never know when it’ll be your turn to get rocked, which is why you should take earthquake preparedness very seriously.
As we have said repeatedly during the last year, regardless of the size of your business you just can’t afford to adopt the attitude that it won’t happen to you because the odds are high that it probably will.
In terms of your operations, the first step towards earthquake preparedness is to identify potential hazards around your workplace and fix them. That means securing equipment and office furniture that could easily tip over in an earthquake.
If the taller, heavier items were to fall two things could happen. The first is that one of your employees might be in the way at the time, and if so, could be seriously injured, and second you could lose valuable data and other information stored in the damaged equipment. A third variable of course is that you would then have expenses associated with dealing with the first two things.
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that if it’s heavy enough to hurt you if it falls on you it should be secured.
Of course, in the case of an office, lab, data center, server room and so on it’s also a matter of protecting your investments by preventing expensive equipment from falling and smashing as the cost of replacing it all could become astronomical.
In terms of any of the abovementioned places, seismic mitigation helps to create a safer work environment, complies with building codes and will ensure your business continuity. To that end, earthquake preparedness fastening programs can be custom designed for your business.
Emergency Kits
The main purpose of these articles is to focus on earthquake preparedness and outline why it should be a priority for any business in an earthquake zone, and in line with that, something else that should be part of your preparedness efforts are emergency kits.
Emergency kits are designed to get you through the first 72 hours after an earthquake by providing disaster supplies that will help you and your employees survive.
There are many variations of emergency kits, including two-person and four-person kits, 10 and 20 person kits and bigger site safety kits, all of which are ideal for the business environment.
Earthquakes often cause the loss of essential services like power and water and struggling without them, as well as food, for sustained periods can transform highly stressful times into life-threatening emergencies.
An earthquake can hit at any time, so as a business owner you ought to think about having emergency kits on hand for your workforce so that you will be prepared when the time comes.
Earthquake Preparedness in the Workplace
Earthquakes are unpredictable, meaning earthquake preparedness is the most practical course of action to take. If your equipment is unsecured it could be damaged or trashed beyond repair in a quake and the best way to prevent that is to take action now to avoid major financial and logistical headaches later.
A free risk evaluation will determine how best to meet your needs. QuakeHOLD! Industrial is the leader in earthquake preparedness and we have developed a wide range of safety fasteners to get the job done no matter how big or small. If you run a business in an earthquake zone, you really need to do something about earthquake preparedness and we strongly encourage you to look into it today.