EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS

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.

Earthquake Preparedness Highlighted In New Zealand

The recent 7.0 earthquake in New Zealand should have taught us another lesson about the importance of earthquake preparedness. Many businesses were not prepared and as a result, equipment and office furniture that was unsecured was either damaged or lost for good.

Like a lot of people here in the USA, folks in Christchurch were rather blasé about the chances of a big earthquake disrupting their livelihoods, but they now know differently.

The damages bill from the temblor is around US$3 billion, so if there is one main lesson to be learned from the Christchurch quake, which was the biggest to hit New Zealand in almost 80 years, it is that securing equipment and office furniture should be a priority.

The technical term for it is non-structural seismic mitigation.

Seismic Protection Products & Services

An earthquake preparedness company that focuses on earthquake preparedness for businesses is just right to protect the business and employees from the earthquake disasters.

A company experienced in seismic bracing and has developed seismic protection systems that are recommended by federal and state agencies including the USGS, FEMA, the California Earthquake Authority and others will be give you exactly what you need in order to get your business going.

If earthquake safety isn’t already high on your list of priorities, it should be. The first place to start is to make a list of all the potential hazards in your business such as tall, top-heavy items of equipment, contents of your office, data centers, labs and so on.

If that seems a bit daunting, we can do it for you by conducting a risk assessment.

The idea is to secure items so that they won’t topple over. Imagine what would happen to your business if you lost your valuable equipment and data.
Our highly acclaimed seismic fastening programs include everything from warehouse seismic mitigation and lab equipment fastening to data center seismic mitigation and countertop fasteners.

Employee safety is another important thing you should be thinking about because securing those potential hazards will make for a safer environment for your workers. It will minimize the risk of injuries to them from falling objects.

As we’ve repeatedly reminded you during the past few months, if your business is based in an earthquake zone you shouldn’t procrastinate a moment longer about earthquake preparedness.

Emergency Kits

Be prepared with disaster supplies and emergency kits for businesses.

Different situations require different solutions and we’ve got you covered. The 10-person Site Safety Kit is specifically for the workplace. It contains enough emergency items to sustain up to 10 people for 72 hours.

There is also an Evacuation Kit for individuals. It’s designed for employees to keep at their work stations so they can quickly grab it if they need to evacuate their building. Each kit has enough food, water and other essentials in it for one person for 24 hours.

And there is the Pandemic Response Kit. It has been developed in response to the high level of concern over the spread of things like the Pandemic H1N1 Flu. This item provides protection for up to four people against the spread of germs, both on touchable surfaces and airborne.

Each one of the options we’ve been reviewing in this blog is an important part of earthquake preparedness

You may find more information about earthquake preparedness at http://www.quakeholdindustrial.com/

Emergency Disaster Kits For Earthquake Preparedness

We had the privilege recently of being included in a National Preparedness Task Force town hall meeting in San Diego to talk about emergency preparedness and naturally earthquake preparedness was a big part of the discussion. In this article we will primarily discuss about the importance of emergency disaster kits

In a previous article we mentioned that federal and state agencies now encourage all of us to be self-sufficient for at least three days in the event of an emergency, natural or manmade, and a key aspect of that is having emergency disaster kits on hand.

The idea is to have three-day emergency disaster kits readily accessible in your home, office and car because you just never know where you will be when something happens such as an earthquake.

Being prepared is your best defense against earthquakes and making sure that you, your loved ones and your employees have survival kits and or disaster kits is part of the process of being prepared.

Emergency Disaster Kits

In our previous article we talked about the need to have a kit, so in this blog we’ll look at what should go into them.

When discussing emergency kits, the conversation can sometimes get bogged down in a debate about the contents of kits. What are the best items to have in them, should you put them together yourself, if so, where do you start, and if not, where do you get ones that are already assembled?

We’ve taken all the worry and stress out of the decision-making. We’ve done the research, sought advice from emergency preparedness experts and sourced the necessary items to develop a wide range of three-day kits to suit any situation.

While we had earthquakes in mind when we developed our kits, they’re also applicable to just about any other emergency situation including hurricanes, wildfires and floods. The one thing all of these natural disasters have in common is that they can be extremely disruptive to your normal everyday life.

In a very short space of time you can suddenly find yourself without electricity, food and water, and shelter and that’s where our emergency kits come into play.

Disaster Supplies Or Emergency Disaster Kits

The Grab ‘n Go kits contain the three basic essentials as recommended by the American Red Cross - food, water and a blanket.

The food and water is approved by the US Coast Guard and both have a five-year shelf life.

Other contents include First Aid kits, emergency lightsticks, ponchos, dust masks, nitrile gloves, eye goggles, leather work gloves, a multi-function Emergency Power Station (flashlight, AM/FM radio, cell phone charger and personal alarm), multi-function tool, tissues, duct tape and more.

You can easily find a variety of kits for different needs. There are one-person, two-person and four-person kits for the home and family. There are 10 and 20 person versions for the office and workplace situations along with pet evacuation kits.

How To Get An Emergency Disaster Kit

For individuals, the easiest way to get one of our kits is to go to a home improvement center. The big box stores up and down the West Coast carry them in the Hardware Department.

The two-person and four-person kits are available nationally in the online stores of Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Amazon and Overstock.

You can also get them from online stores, like we have one at www.readyamerica.com. Businesses can purchase disaster kits directly, which can be ordered as per the business requirement.