EMERGENCY PLANNING AND PREPAREDNESS
Stan Szpytek, a retired deputy fire chief
who frequently consults senior living provid- ers as president of Fire and Life Safety Inc., uses the phrase “it’s a normal day until it’s not” to drive home the unpredictability of most crises. “There are many threats and perils that
STAN SZPYTEK President
Fire and Life Safety, Inc.
“On a single focused incident, like maybe a medical emergency at a senior living community, they call 911 and they’ll be there in three minutes. But what if it’s a disaster? In a true disaster, you’ve got to realize that you’re going to be on your own for the first hours, days or longer, depending on the scope, severity and duration of the disaster.”
can impact any type of occupancy,” Szpytek said. “Organizations that provide services to vulnerable populations – either as a best practice or in the realm of regulation – they’ve got to be prepared for emergencies as well as they can be.” Emergencies in senior living can touch on
a wide variety of situations and crises – in- cluding natural disasters, intruders (includ- ing armed ones), fires, cyberattacks, power blackouts, and, of course, a pandemic, among other possibilities. For senior living providers, the pandemic
helped to drive home how crucial emergen- cy planning and preparation is, while also providing meaningful lessons to refine and strengthen their efforts in that area. Among the most impactful lessons was the impor- tance of actively managing an emergency rather than simply enduring it. Emergencies should no longer knock communities back on their heels. “Senior living communities have to em-
brace the emergency, manage it, and not let the tail wag the dog,” Szpytek said. “COV- ID was a good example of that. There were many health care and senior living provid- ers in the early stages of COVID who were just responding and reacting to the daily changes and the daily information that was coming in instead of taking the bull by the horns and managing it.” That starts with an emergency manage-
ment plan that involves stakeholders. While residents previously might have tended to simply follow a provider’s lead, they are more likely to want more details and in- put in the current climate and after having weathered the pandemic first-hand, said Jon Scott Williams, executive director of Fellow- ship Square in Mesa, Ariz. “Residents today expect management to
have a plan and to share the plan with them on a regular basis,” Williams said. “In the past, they assumed management had a plan, but now they ask for updates and with the internet they offer plans that they have heard about.”
Szpytek said he still sees some senior liv-
ing communities with “tepid” and “basic” emergency management plans that often rely on assumptions about local fire, police, and rescue responses that do not anticipate the challenges of a major emergency. “When the tornado touches down or
the hurricane blasts through, whatever the circumstances are, youʼre going to find out just how limited the greater community’s resources are,” he said. “On a single focused incident, like maybe
a medical emergency at a senior living com- munity, they call 911 and they’ll be there in three minutes. But what if it’s a disaster? In a true disaster, you’ve got to realize that you’re going to be on your own for the first hours, days or longer, depending on the scope, severity and duration of the disaster.”
Tackling All of the Hazards 1
Providers can prepare for a range of sce- narios, but Szpytek said it is important not to simply focus on the ones that seem most likely. Instead, providers must develop an approach that prepares them for any occur- rence – from the common to the exceed- ingly rare. “It’s one thing to say, ‘OK, we'll be ready
for anything.’ But the reality is how do we prepare for everything?” he said. “You have to have an all-hazards approach. You’ve got to be ready for anything and everything.” The first key component to an all-haz-
ards approach is risk analysis, Szpytek said. That starts with a hazard vulnerability as- sessment, he said. “You can't just arbitrarily plan for emergencies or disasters,” he said. “You’ve got to have a process that identifies what your hazards are.” When clear hazards are identified, senior
living providers have a responsibility to ad- dress them, no matter how straightforward they might seem. For instance, Williams noted that many people in the West live in single-story structures on lots without con- necting walls.
10 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE JULY/AUGUST 2023
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