Master of Disaster:
Housekeeping’s Role

When disaster struck at the World Trade Center September 11, 2001, the NYU Downtown Hospital, which was only a few blocks away from ground zero, became a safe haven for many New Yorkers.

As people poured in and dust and soot surrounded the hospital, doctors, nurses, managers, engineers and housekeepers deployed the hospital’s disaster plan. They turned off the HVAC units and closed off all outside dampers to prevent smoke from contaminating the building.

Housekeeping staff broke into strike teams, or task forces. One team reported to the emergency room to wash dust off patients and emergency workers; another team monitored the hospital’s water supply; a third installed emergency electrical feeds in ambulance bays. Housekeeping staff also moved tables in the cafeteria to create a treatment area.

When an earthquake shook the State of Washington campus two years ago, campus housekeeping staff helped building occupants to safety.

“Our caretakers [housekeepers] participated with the building managers in helping to evacuate the building and block entrance back into the buildings,” says Pattie Williams, facilities support services manager for the State of Washington.

If people were allowed to go back into the buildings to retrieve their belongings, the housekeeping staff accompanied them with flashlights. They later participated in the cleanup.

Emergency preparedness should be a key element in any housekeeping training program. Staff should be ready to implement their organization’s disaster plan and everyone should know their role.

“We have equipment, supplies, and expertise that can assist in the mitigation of an event,” says Williams. “And just having the bodies available to help set up barricades and other things can be a help.”

Every building, depending on its mission, carries its own unique disaster risks.

“Based on the location of the hospital — we are located just three blocks from the World Trade Center and other key [terrorist] targets, such as the New York Stock Exchange, Brooklyn Bridge, federal courts, and City Hall — and our hazard vulnerability analysis, we recognized that a terrorist attack was likely,” says Michael Rawlings, director of engineering for the NYU Downtown Hospital. “We rate emergency preparedness very high on our list of responsibilities to our community.”

Besides citywide catastrophes, facilities also risk internal disasters or emergencies of their own.

“For instance, a housekeeping department in a major hospital will come into contact with multiple hazards, such as chemical spills, blood and infectious material spills, needles and other sharps, pharmaceutical agents, gases, and others,” says Jeffery Camplin, president of Camplin Environmental Services in Rosemont, Ill.

“A typical office housekeeping staff may deal with chemical spills, mold and mildew cleanup, floods or fires,” he says.

Put staff first
One key aspect of any housekeeping manager’s emergency plan is to keep the housekeeping staff safe.

“The employees are trained in their own safety and protection first, and then we call upon them to assist in ways that they’re trained and equipped,” Williams says.

Her plan even accounts for the welfare of employees’ homes and families.

“If an event were to happen, everyone’s first concern would be for their home,” she says. “We recognize that a lot of people are going to want to go home and come back. A contingency for that is built into our plan.”

Know your role
The housekeeping manager should know which hazardous situations the housekeeping staff can handle versus which situations should be left to another department.

In a hospital, for example, Camplin says, housekeepers often are trained to handle biohazardous materials such as blood and other bodily fluids.

On the other hand, he says, if a mercury thermometer broke, housekeeping staff may or may not be involved.

“There may be another department that cleans [mercury] up, and the housekeeping staff should be aware that they’re not qualified to clean [mercury] up,” Camplin says. “We’ve had situations where, in good conscience, housekeeping goes to clean up mercury and ends up spreading it and causing a bigger problem.”

The decision as to which hazards are handled by housekeeping is typically made by the building administration, and the housekeeping employees should be well aware of their roles.

Get Equipped
The equipment that the housekeeping staff will need in case of an emergency depends on the building, the emergency and housekeeping’s role in each emergency. For example, if chemical spills are a possibility, spill kits, respiratory protection, and containers for the contaminated materials are necessary.

On the State of Washington campus, the housekeeping staff’s job in the case of an emergency is sanitation and cleanup.

“We have cleaning chemicals, gloves, goggles, plastic bags, barrels, caddies — we’re equipped to provide assistance with cleaning up after an [emergency],” Williams says.

At the NYU Downtown Hospital, housekeeping has access to respirators, gloves, boots and special equipment, such as HEPA vacuums to clean up dust and debris and flood pumpers and wet vacs for responding to floods.

Train regularly
Emergency preparedness training should be reviewed with staff regularly, in addition to the department’s basic training program.

Camplin points out that, depending on their everyday tasks, housekeeping staff are trained in safety regulations and basic awareness training.

“Each hospital employee, including all housekeeping staff, attends a four-hour class on the hospital’s emergency management plan,” Rawlings says.

“In addition, a large number of our housekeeping staff also have received an additional 16 hours of training on responding to hazmat events, and are a part of the hospital’s decon team.”

The hospital’s fire brigade, comprised of engineers and housekeeping staff, goes through regular fire-safety training. The fire brigade responds to hospital fires and is trained to take the proper steps to extinguish fires.

At the State of Washington, housekeeping staff are trained to report to a specific meeting location in an emergency. Staff then are dispatched from that site.

“They’re not trained in terms of what to do in the case of an event,” Williams says, adding that staff are trained to wait for orders from managers at the meeting location.

To determine how much and what kind of training your housekeeping staff needs in case of an emergency, Camplin suggests checking out the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration Web site, www.osha.gov. This site helps employers identify potential hazards and exposures that employees may encounter in various work environments.

Check with insurers
Managers should be aware that the effectiveness of staff response during an emergency can have an effect on insurance claims.

For example, if housekeeping staff fail at their attempts to take corrective action during an emergency, the insurance agency may refuse to cover the damage.

“If their corrective actions cause a problem, the insurance agency says, ‘We’re not going to cover that now, because you just made it worse,’” Camplin says

But, in a perfect example of a Catch-22, the insurance agency might deny a claim if housekeeping lets the emergency take its course without trying to mitigate the damage.

Says Camplin, “They might say, ‘Since you didn’t do anything, the situation was worse, so we won’t cover that.’”

The only way to avoid such problems is to learn as much as you can about your organization’s insurance coverage and find out what administration expects from your department in an emergency situation.

Know who to contact
If nothing else, make sure employees know where they can get help in an emergency.

“Communication is important, as well as accessibility — being able to get hold of whoever you need to get hold of,” says Jim Rush, department manager of site operations for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.

Rush manages 85 custodians, including nine lead custodians and an additional four team supervisors.

Sandia Labs also has several full-time “incident commanders” who are on-site at all times and a group called “rescue recon” that can be called on in case of an emergency. But this hierarchy can cause confusion, so Sandia has one main phone number for emergency scenarios.

“If you don’t remember any other telephone number, you remember that number,” Rush says.

Have a plan
There is no way of knowing when an emergency will occur — or how to anticipate every emergency contingency. But managers can prepare their departments via a thorough training program, provide basic safety equipment, and encourage knowledge of both facilities operations and the organization’s safety policies.