Emergency Response Plans
When an incident occurs at a heritage site, members of staff or volunteers will need to quickly identify actions to take to reduce the impacts and harm to the site, the property and its collections, and people. Having an emergency plan in place will help achieve this, as will ensuring that the plan has been socialized with those who are likely to use it and that appropriate training and exercising with the plan has been undertaken.
What is an emergency response plan
An emergency response plan should be used throughout an emergency to help identify appropriate steps to follow and actions to take to minimise the impacts of the event and keep people safe. For an historic building or site containing historic collections, an emergency response plan aims to ensure that salvage operations are undertaken safely and that damage and long-term deterioration of the building and its contents are minimised.
An emergency response plan needs to be specific to the building, its collections and its operational requirements. The plan needs to be easy to understand and accessible to any person who needs to use it. This might be site staff or volunteers, or the Fire and Rescue Service.
Consider reaching out to the local Fire and Rescue Service to make them aware of the risks associated with the site, in particular the nature of any collections, and invite them to review the site salvage plan.
Preparing an emergency response plan
In its simplest form, an emergency response plan is a collection of contacts, instructions and actions aimed at supporting response activity in what could be a challenging environment. It involves:
- Compiling an emergency contact list
- Making decisions about prioritising objects in collections
- Ensuring locations of those key objects are clearly recorded
The Fire & Rescue Service may need to assist in salvaging objects from the building, so it is vital to include site and room plans that they can use to help locate these objects. The plan should identify locations where salvaged objects might be recovered to away from the building, and who might undertake 'first aid' treatment of objects.
Plans will vary in scope and detail according to the size and complexity of the premises concerned. The responsible person should tailor the plan according to the nature of their site and the resource they have available. Key staff such as the duty manager and salvage operation coordinators will need copies of the relevant parts of the plan.
A copy of the salvage plan should be kept in a secure location on site and another securely held elsewhere on site or off site by a responsible person. It is a good idea to laminate all documents in the plan as they may need to be used outdoors in adverse weather conditions.
Emergency response plan structure and templates
The Historic England emergency response plan template is structured in three parts. Each part can be downloaded below. Individual pages can be used and filled in, to produce a plan that is bespoke for each site.
This section contains the relevant details needed for the initial response to an emergency and they should be presented in the order they are likely to be used. It needs to be readily accessible at the front of the plan and should include:
- a contact list of the personnel responsible for salvage operations
- a contact list of service providers
- site and building plans
- salvage priorities
- grab sheets (procedures for the removal of items)
- location of temporary storage facilities and 'first aid' treatment of salvaged objects
- arrangements for the longer-term storage or treatment of damaged objects
Historic England's Emergency Response Plan templates provide examples to use and can be tailored to the needs of the site.
Grab sheets
Historic England recommends preparing individual grab sheets for each priority object. This ensures objects are rescued in the correct order, with, if the incident allows, those of the highest significance first. Each grab sheet consists of:
- a floor plan with the room of the priority item highlighted clearly along with a close-up of the exact location within the room
- a photograph of the item, along with details of how to remove the object, including manual handling instructions and equipment requirements
To help salvage teams identify objects quickly, a simple description is sometimes more useful than the proper object title; for example (see image) we refer to the Grey Teal (Anas gracilis) simply as a taxidermy duck, which is what most people would identify with. If a room is filled with similar items all of significant value, however daunting the task may be, it is still worth sorting them into an order of removal.
Items may be prioritised according to their ownership, historic significance, rarity or size and ease of removal. If a priority item is too large or heavy to move, or if the very fabric of the room is important, such as a hand-painted wallpaper, then the grab sheet would indicate to divert threats away or protect in situ.
It may be helpful to keep detailed photographic records of in situ objects so that should the worst happen and they are damaged, they can be repaired.
The second part of the plan should set out how to handle an emergency. This will help to organise teams, the roles, responsibilities and tasks of those involved in the response, and how to work with the emergency services.
This section should also provide a system for logging incident decisions and actions and recording and tracking salvaged objects.
Further advice, checklists and examples of logs are available below.
The emergency response plan should also include a salvage equipment inventory list and details of where this equipment is stored. Further advice on salvage equipment and storage can be found on our Salvage Equipment page.
This section of the plan provides reference documents the team might need when responding to an emergency.
Our guidance document on how to treat and store objects after an emergency provides advice on common conservation treatments such as air-drying and freezing, and dealing with mould, plus quick reference sheets on saving:
- books
- ceramic and glass
- furniture
- leather
- metals
- natural history objects
- paintings
- paper
- photographs
- plastics
- stone and plaster
- textiles
Emergency information templates
Templates for responding to an emergency
Guidance templates
Training and testing
It is important that those responsible for managing an incident response are trained to use the emergency plan. This should include undertaking live exercises which help identify any vulnerabilities in the plan, as well as any gaps in the training provision.
Undertaking a joint exercise with the Fire & Rescue Service and if possible, other Local Resilience Forum (LRF) organisations, can help clarify the roles and responsibilities of different actors that might be involved in a response at the site.
Below are three types of exercises that can help test an emergency plan.
These take place among smaller groups of people sat around a table. They are discussion-based sessions where a facilitator will lead the group though different incident scenarios. They are designed to explore how the group would use the emergency plan to decide what actions they would take at each stage of an incident, whilst clarifying the roles and responsibilities outlined in the plan.
These will likely also take place around a table, but are more dynamic in nature, with the scenarios designed to play out according to the decisions and actions taken by the exercise players. These exercises can be used to stress-test specifical parts of a plan and will help identify where emergency planning arrangements lack resilience.
These are field-based exercises with a pre-written scenario and injects designed to test the practical implementation of an emergency plan. They will test the procedures and command structure detailed in a plan and involve players undertaking real actions in real-time, according to the decisions made they make.
Live play exercises should replicate a real scenario as closely as possible, whilst still prioritizing the health and safety of all involved. Practical salvage exercises should include using grab sheets, manual handling and carrying out emergency treatment to damaged mock objects.
Regardless of which exercise type used, it is important to define the following elements when designing the exercise:
This a statement that describes what the exercise seeks to achieve and what the outcomes should be for the site, as well as the organisations and people involved.
These are the individual measurables and goals that the exercise and its participants will look to demonstrate and achieve in order to deliver the exercise aim.
This will often be determined by the type of exercise used and the exercise objectives. It is important to deliver an exercise according to the resources and time available and not to try and achieve too much in one exercise.
It should be clear which roles are taking part in the exercise any why, in order to deliver the exercise objectives. All players should understand their responsibilities to ensure they are able to actively learn from the experience.
Ensuring a method for capturing feedback is in place both during the exercise and afterwards is crucial for ensuring that lesson are learnt. Exercise observers can capture feedback whilst the exercise is in progress, hot debrief forms can be used immediately after the exercise, and cold-debrief sessions can be arranged in the following weeks.
Feedback should be reviewed as soon as possible after the exercise. The aim is to assess whether the exercise aim and objectives were met and identify lessons learnt. These lessons should inform any updates required to the emergency plan, where further training is required and where general emergency planning arrangements need to be improved.
The UK Government has produced Exercising Best Practice Guidance for Government departments, agencies and Arms-Length Bodies, elements of which can be used to support the development of exercises at smaller organisations.
Further advice
Please contact EmergencyPlanning@historicengland.org.uk for any further emergency planning advice.
Also of interest
