We have just completed a chemical spill exercise for a manufacturing client. The exercise was written to test the facilities emergency response team, chemical spill team, first aiders and portable bunding capabilities.
The handling and storage of chemicals is governed by the Chemicals Acts and the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act. These provide for a set of guidelines that are there to protect everyone who may come into contact with chemicals.
In this case the company have a very robust emergency response plan in place. They also know that plans alone will not protect their staff, facilities, products or reputation if a critical incident occurs. They undertake exercises to test their plans and to prepare their response teams for any incident.
This exercise was a scenario based live exercise involving the loss of containment of a toxic chemical. Once the alarm was raised the emergency response team were activated. They then utilised their trained chemical spill team to contain and then clean-up the spill as per the safety data sheet. The scenario also involved an injury to a member of staff so that the first aiders were tasked with administering first aid in a contaminated scene. The sites portable bunding capabilities were also tested.
Exercises like this not only prepare sites for critical incidents, they also highlight any gaps that may exist. No one wants to wait until a real incident occurs to learn about response gaps!