Kathleen: I've had some experience with this sort of thing the last couple of years. Here's the deal, emergency generators are generally designed to provide for life safety issues first. And BTW, an emergency action plan is an OSHA requirement. But they will not tell you how to write it. You will need to do that based on relevant risk assessments. Next on the generator is usually some key critical equipment, followed by whatever else your system can handle and whatever else your facility decides needs EM power. Though employees want it, it is unrealistic to have the whole facility on emergency power. A real important piece of your plan should be to have current "emergency phone contact" information listed for each lab/department. "Current" meaning someone who still works there. Someone that you can call at home, or on their cellphone, and they will answer. Then they can come in and deal with what can, and cannot, be shut down. It is really frustrating to be calling people at home and to get a recording that says "that number is no longer in service". Your maintenance personnel will be far too busy during a power outage to be baby sitting lab equipment. Leave it up to the persons who own the machines. Jay Skarda Director of Safety & Security National Jewish Health -----Original Message----- =46rom: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Schmidt-Nebril, Kathleen Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 6:35 PM To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: [DCHAS-L] Emergency Action Plan for science labs My university recently was hit with a four day power outage due to severe storms. Our science building is recently new and has a back up generator however none of the main lab instruments or equipment were backed up to it. Hoods, lights and ventilation were. In the end we are looking at a huge insurance claim and are now trying to prepare an action plan for each of our labs in the event we go through something like this again. I am the CH O for the department and was asked to put this together. Does anyone know what OSHA standard, if any, I should be looking at for this=3F They want t o incorporate a "what to do" list for example if none of the scientists were around someone from maintenance could follow it to turn off sensitive equipment in our absence. My thought on that is would we need to train and document anyone who might have to respond and use our action list=3F Kathleen NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy al l copies of the original message.
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