Wellington Businesses Urged to Review Evacuation Plans

Wellington Businesses Urged to Review Evacuation Plans as Earthquakes Continue

24 January 2017

Wellington Visitor and Evacuation Management Software startup, WhosOnLocation, is appealing to businesses to review their building evacuation processes as aftershocks following the 2016 magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake continue.

“Everyone should be able to know who is safe and who isn’t in an evacuation following an earthquake, or any other emergency for that matter,” says Darren Whitaker-Barnett, Founder, and CEO, WhosOnLocation.

“If you run a business, being able to quickly and effectively verify the safety of your people (as well as visitors and contractors on-site) during an emergency evacuation is crucial,” says Whitaker-Barnett.

“The start of the year is as good a time to go through your current evacuation process to see where it can be improved. There’s a wealth of resources, organisations, and products accessible to businesses to be able to make sure their evacuation processes are as safe and effective as possible,” says Whitaker-Barnett.

We often hear from new customers that they weren't even aware of the many types of technology available to them to manage evacuations in a quicker and more reliable way. It’s 2017, so there’s no reason to have to rely on an old paper sign-in sheet to try and figure out who made it to the muster point during an evacuation.” says Whitaker-Barnett.

WhosOnLocation’s WolEvac feature allows users (Safety Marshals, Fire and Floor Wardens) to collaborate with each other to verify they have cleared their zones or areas, and to then verify the safety of employees, visitors, and contractors after they have assembled outside the zone of risk.

When first activated WolEvac displays all people on-site at the time of the evacuation as ‘unverified’. Multiple safety marshals or fire and floor wardens can ‘join’ the activated evacuation event. The role of these users is to verify the safety of all people on-site at that point in time. Users can carry out a manual roll-call. If a person is ‘present’ and accounted for the user can switch that person’s status from being ‘unverified’ to ‘verified’.

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