Summary report on the experience of emergency response guide

There is no "universal emergency guide" that applies to all scenarios. A truly effective operation manual is essentially a flexible framework that "leave enough redundancy beforehand, give full authority during the incident, and clarify the review path afterwards" rather than a rigid instruction manual that blocks every step of the operation.

Speaking of this conclusion, the gas leakage accident in Lao Alley last month taught me a hard lesson. There was a strong smell of rotten eggs in the alley that day, and my hands were sweating while holding the flammable gas alarm. I flipped through three pages of the old guide, but I still couldn't find the entry "What to do if the designated contact person is stuck on the road and cannot contact the gas company." The old version of the guide was written based on the ideal state of "all staff on duty and smooth links." The first step was to evacuate, the second step was to report to the gas company, and the third step was to raise the alarm. The steps were arranged perfectly, but left no room for error. At that time, the scene was in chaos. Some residents rushed in to turn off the main valve of their house, and some merchants were rushing to move the liquefied gas tanks in the store. I only had one thought in my mind: How could this beautifully written guide be turned into waste paper when it arrived at the scene?

After this incident, I deliberately looked through the notes I had taken from previous trainings, and found out that there are two completely different ideas in the industry regarding the logic of formulating emergency guidelines. Academic experts always insist on standardizing the process into every action and every right and responsibility, so as to avoid on-the-spot buck-passing and operational errors. This is suitable for large-scale emergencies involving cross-regional and multi-department collaboration, such as chemical park explosions and river basin floods. Without unified rules, it will become a mess. But our district’s veteran webmaster, who has been working in emergency situations for 12 years, still doesn’t agree with this. He always says, “How can we have time to check step by step when the emergency is really urgent? "The guide should be blank to give the first responder on the scene the authority to make decisions." I thought he was a "wild man" before. It wasn't until that day in the alley where the gas leaked that I had to arrange for people to remove the main switch at the entrance of the alley, evacuate the residents 50 meters away, and stopped passers-by who wanted to smoke before completing the reporting process. Afterwards, no mistakes were found in the review, so I realized that what he said was not unreasonable.

Oh, by the way, when I wrote the guide before, I deliberately changed the main text to the standard size 4 font. Later, when I was on site due to heavy rain and waterlogging, I realized that when the rain poured on the paper, the page became mushy and it was impossible to see the small print. Now our on-site guide has all been replaced with bold size 2 font, and it has also been plastic-wrapped. It sounds like a trivial matter, but when you actually use it, you realize how important it is. During the short-term heavy rainfall last week, our three grid members happened to be investigating in the low-lying community. According to the requirements of the new version of the guideline, "elderly people living alone should be transferred with the highest priority first." Without waiting to go back to mobilize the emergency team, we carried three elderly people with limited mobility to the high-rise shelter. It was at least 20 minutes faster than the previous process of "report first, transfer people, and then transfer". By the time the water reached the first floor, the elderly people had already drank hot ginger tea.

Of course, this does not mean that flexibility must be good. The fire in the logistics warehouse in the next district last month was because the person in charge of the site skipped the mandatory process of "confirming the type of goods stored in the warehouse first" and directly arranged for water spraying to extinguish the fire. As a result, the flammable materials stored in the warehouse exploded when exposed to water, which in turn increased the losses. Therefore, there is never right or wrong between the two ideas. It only depends on the adaptation scenario: if it involves high-risk industries and cross-department collaboration, the red line steps must be welded to death. ； For communities and small and micro emergencies, it would be more efficient to have more flexibility.

The guide on my desk now has frayed corners, and the margins are filled with notes that I make up every time I go out: "The old alley's fire passage is narrow and fire trucks can't get in. You need to contact the community's mini fire station in advance to get there first." Register the appeals of the injured people, otherwise it will easily lead to conflicts.” - I used to think that the guide should be an official document with beautiful binding and unaltered word for word. But now I understand that for those of us working on the front line, this thing is essentially a “wrong question book”. It does not need to be beautiful or organized, but it is the best guide if it can save lives, cause less trouble, and save the people from losses.