“Smoke in … building leads to small evacuation”

Emergencies can occur without warning. It is essential that your emergency action plan be site specific with respect to emergency conditions evaluated, evacuation policies and procedures, emergency reporting mechanisms, and alarm systems. Effective plans often call for retraining employees annually and include drills in which employees can practice evacuating their workplace and gathering in the assembly area.  After each drill, gather management and employees to evaluate the effectiveness of the drill. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your plan and work to improve it. Here is a recent story emphasizing the need of emergency evacuations.

About 20 to 30 people were evacuated at Alcoa Davenport Works in the United States on the morning of January 27, 2015 after smoke was seen in an auxiliary building where oil reclamation is done.

Firefighters from Riverdale and Bettendorf responded, but an Alcoa spokesman said there were no injuries and no impact on overall production at the company.

The Alcoa spokesman, said he didn't know how the incident started, but smoke was seen about 6:30 a.m.

He said he didn't think there was anybody in the building at the time, but workers in proximity to the building were evacuated from their area.

Because many of Alcoa's buildings have high ceilings, the Alcoa spokesman said, fire crews were called to the scene as a precaution.

Firefighters remained until about 8 a.m. or shortly after, he said, adding the evacuation had ended.

Another media article that was posted later.

Employees were evacuated from an auxiliary building at the Alcoa facility in Davenport, Iowa after fire broke out in an oil barrel.

The fire was reported just after 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, January 27, 2015.  Employees were reportedly able to put it out within a few minutes, and it was confined to an auxiliary building with no impact on the main plant.

“We evacuated about 20 to 30 people from the immediate area at the time as a precaution,” said Alcoa Communications and Public Affairs Manager.

Firefighters ventilated the building and were gone before 8:30 a.m., Alcoa Communications and Public Affairs Manager said.  There was “no significant impact on operations.” No injuries were reported.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog would like to commend the Alcoa Davenport Works for the safe evacuation of their workers during this incident. The APSB has made a concentrated effort in the past not to identify the company name if an incident involved an injury or fatality. Why? Because it is not this blog's intention to place blame on neither company nor worker(s), but the hope that awareness of these accidents brings education and prevention of recurrence. Public shaming a company in our opinion will do nothing, if anything it could be counterproductive on our goal of preventing recurrence. So we choose to not name companies. But, when companies do something positive (in our opinion), we publicly name them. Why? Because the news media only publishes the negative stories someone (yes, the APSB is stepping up on the soapbox) needs to remind the industry and any naysayers that our industry does a great deal when it comes to protecting our workers. Alcoa a leader in protecting their workers should be acknowledge. The APSB has posted incidents where emergency evacuations have not gone smoothly, and injuries resulted. Speaking from experience Alcoa’s emphasis on safety is real and can be used as a benchmark for others to emulate. Keep up the good work.

Lastly, I also want to commend Alcoa on responding to the press when this issue broke out. Too many times the APSB sees that the local police or fire department official are responding to media questions that an aluminium company should be answering. Time and time again it has been shown when aluminium companies will not speak, the media will make assumptions (mostly incorrect) on what occurred. Whereas the police and fire department have an important job, but their specialty is not speaking to the media. There have been countless incidents that the APSB is aware of that the information given out by the police/fire department is flat out wrong. So every plant needs to have who, how, what should be said to the media in their emergency management plan.

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