On Thursday, the entire IPRA office building and the two surrounding buildings were evacuated due to an apparent gas leak in one of the neighboring buildings. What ended up being more of a nuisance, some serious concerns over the preparedness of our building and facilities like yours to handle such emergency situations were raised.

While our staff was enjoying a nice Portillo’s lunch in the conference room we were alerted to the fact that the building was being evacuated. Apparently a few emails had been sent from the building manager addressing a gas-like smell in the air surrounding our building. Given that we were not at our computers the emails never got to us. So when the news of the building evacuation came we all kind of sat there questioning the order to leave.

Was it serious? How urgent was it really? There were no sirens going off. There were no visible signs of a fire nor were any emergency vehicles in plain view.

This is where I believe the problem begins. Communication.

The building managers were relying on an email, possibly a phone call, to a single person in each office suite. That person was then supposed to relay the urgent news to the rest of their staffs. What if that person wasn’t around? To complicate the situation, when we finally walked down the stairs to the atrium level we were surrounded by every other confused tenant wondering what the seriousness was. There was not a leader. No one had the definitive answer and means to communicate it to every person in the building. It was finally determined by the fire department that it would be best for people to go home if they did not have to be in the office. Thanks to our friends at the Oak Brook Park District we had a place to finish our working day.

The fact that there was not a visible and vocal leader directing the group and that so many people were left with questions about the evacuation leaves me questioning their communication tactics in a serious situation. I am not faulting our building managers in any way. Perhaps the situation was communicated to people very clearly…but not to me. I could have still been in the bathroom or in my office and not have known that the building was evacuated.

There is actually a company called TextMarks, and there are others like them, that allow for people to join a text message group. In our situation, everyone in the building could have joined the “1815 S. Meyers Building Emergency Group” and a single text message could have been sent by the building manager to every individual tenant. This eliminates the need for hundreds of people gathering around trying to hear one person scream instructions while others in the back can’t hear. Texting the updates to everyone eliminates the rumors and questions people may have because the news is coming straight from the authoritative source.

Sure some people may not carry their cell phones around all the time. Or maybe you don’t have text messaging capabilities on your cell. But I know I carry my cell with me around the office and to the bathroom…not my computer or office phone. It’s another way that building managers could communicate with people in times of emergencies.

Let us know what you think about the TextMarks idea because a group has already been created for the 2008 IAPD/IPRA Soaring to New Heights Conference…just in case. I still don’t know if people are allowed in our building or if anything else major happened after we left. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

I would guess that because of the lunch hour that the evacuation occurred there were only about 100 people congregating in the atrium being told to evacuate the building. Now think about your facilities and some of the events you host. A park district can easily have four times the amount of people under their roof during an event. What are some other ideas to help make park district facilities ready to communicate in emergency situations?