When wildfires threaten your facility, take these immediate actions:
- Support team members in securing their families first
- Monitor air quality indices and establish clear evacuation triggers
- Begin shutting down non-essential operations
- Establish clear communication channels with all shifts
- Empower team leads with decision-making authority
- Activate emergency response protocols
The key is balancing two critical priorities: protecting human life and maintaining essential operations. While life safety always comes first, strategic preparation allows you to address both.
Your team can't focus on facility safety while worried about their families. A distracted team makes mistakes, and mistakes during fires cost lives. Build family preparation time into your emergency response plan. Support early release for team members in warning zones, and establish clear communication channels for family emergencies.
For facilities in wildfire-prone areas, preventive measures like high-grade air filtration systems should be part of your standard infrastructure. But during an active emergency, focus on what you can control immediately: getting people to safety and maintaining only truly essential operations.
Building Safety-First Systems
Every decision during a wildfire threat must flow from protecting human life. Buildings worth millions can burn in minutes. Equipment can be replaced. Lives cannot.
An effective safety system during wildfires needs three core elements:
- Clear triggers for action
- Support for family priorities
- Absolute authority to choose safety over operations
Vague instructions like "monitor the situation" put your team at risk. You need specific triggers that launch specific actions:
- Any visible smoke? Begin family communications
- Air quality becoming concerning? Non-essential staff head home
- Fires within 10 miles? Begin full shutdown procedures
- Evacuation warnings issued? Everyone goes - no exceptions
Managing Air Quality
The first battle with wildfires isn't flames – it's smoke, and this often starts long before evacuation orders arrive. Your facility might never face direct flame threat, but smoke creates serious health and operational risks even from fires burning miles away.
Remember that people have different tolerances for poor air quality. Someone with asthma might struggle in conditions others handle easily. Your system must support team members speaking up about health concerns without fear and allow earlier departure for vulnerable staff.
Empowering Teams
Fires don't wait for approval chains. When smoke fills your facility or flames approach, your team needs the authority to act immediately to protect lives.
Clear decision authority prevents dangerous delays:
- Every team member can stop unsafe work
- Shift leads can send people home
- Area supervisors can shut down operations
- Multiple people have evacuation authority
Managing Essential Operations
Some facilities can't completely shut down – hospitals need power, data centers need cooling, research labs need environmental controls. Here's how to manage this reality:
Start by being brutally honest about what's truly essential. When operations claim everything is critical, nothing gets the proper attention. Your essential operations list should be short and clear:
- Which systems directly support life safety?
- Which operations affect public safety?
- Which shutdowns could create new hazards?
- Everything else is non-essential during a fire emergency
For power management:
- Know exactly which systems must stay running
- Have a clear shutdown sequence for everything else
- Test backup power systems regularly
- Keep enough fuel for extended outages
- Have clear procedures for operating with minimal power
Recovery and Moving Forward
After a fire threat passes, resist the pressure to resume normal operations quickly. This is when accidents happen. Follow this strict sequence:
1. Safety Verification
- Wait for official all-clear from authorities
- Check air quality in all areas
- Verify structural safety
- Test all critical systems
- Document all checks
2. Team Support
- Check on all team members
- Allow flexible return schedules
- Adjust roles as needed
- Support those with personal losses
- Document any lessons learned
3. Restart Sequence
- Begin with critical systems only
- Test each system before restart
- Verify safety between each step
- Document all anomalies
- Take time to do it right
Remember: Your team might be dealing with personal losses during recovery. Some might need more time, while others might temporarily need different roles. Build this flexibility into your recovery plan - it's not just compassionate, it's essential for safety.
Buildings and equipment can be replaced. People cannot. Build your systems with this truth at their center.