Wealther Alert - Action Plan
Dutch2
1,590 Posts
A few months back we had a tornado warning, the local sirens were going off all over town. One of our Senior Mgmt Team decided this was time to initiate our emergency plan. We literally locked the doors, preventing anyone from leaving or anyone from entering the building and instructed our Supervisors to escort all customers and employees to the designated safe areas, in the basement and vault areas. Well, as you can imagine… some (customers and employees) did not want to go as they did not believe the possible severe weather was that close to us and some employees that had children at home demanded to leave so they could go home and check on their kids.
My question is: If there is a Severe Weather Alert, such as a Tornado warning can the business literally force customers and employees to take shelter in the designated safe areas or are they required to allow the customers and/or employees to leave the building if that is what they want to do? (Did you ever try to tell a Momma that she can’t go home and check on her babies during an emergency?)
Granted if there had been a tornado hit the local area it would have saved lives by forcing people to take shelter. The crutch of this case is our Exec cried wolf and there was no severe weather/tornado in our immediate area. The sirens went off because rotation had been dedicated on radar in the north-east corner of our county, we are in the center of the county, and it was already headed away from us. No doubt this will come up again and I was just wondering what others would do and/or have done in similar situations.
I hope to acquire a weather radio and emergency scanner to pick up the local police, sheriff, and fire dept. for the main office very soon in order to know what the local officials are actually reporting. This should help us make a more knowledgeable decision next time.
Thank you.
My question is: If there is a Severe Weather Alert, such as a Tornado warning can the business literally force customers and employees to take shelter in the designated safe areas or are they required to allow the customers and/or employees to leave the building if that is what they want to do? (Did you ever try to tell a Momma that she can’t go home and check on her babies during an emergency?)
Granted if there had been a tornado hit the local area it would have saved lives by forcing people to take shelter. The crutch of this case is our Exec cried wolf and there was no severe weather/tornado in our immediate area. The sirens went off because rotation had been dedicated on radar in the north-east corner of our county, we are in the center of the county, and it was already headed away from us. No doubt this will come up again and I was just wondering what others would do and/or have done in similar situations.
I hope to acquire a weather radio and emergency scanner to pick up the local police, sheriff, and fire dept. for the main office very soon in order to know what the local officials are actually reporting. This should help us make a more knowledgeable decision next time.
Thank you.
Comments
In answer to your question, the best you can do is make people aware of the situation and dangers and it is ultimately their choice. One option, to CYA, is to make them sign off that they chose to leave in spite of the warnings. This way if something does happen to them, you have proof that they were aware of the situation and took action despite being warned otherwise.
Hope this helps.