With the recent events of Hurricane Helene, we find it important to review hurricane readiness plans with a special twist – Industrial Manufacturing. From an article by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), there are 4 main steps to ensuring that your plant is hurricane ready. [1]
- Step 1: Make an Emergency planning team. They will create task lists and assign duties in the event of a storm emergency.
- Step 2: Analyze the capabilities and hazards present at your facility. It is important to have sources of backup power for emergency shut downs and to understand where wind can do the most damage so you known where on-site is the most hazardous.
- Step 3: Develop a plan for before, during and after the storm. It is important to be prepared for the storm, but you also need to be ready to respond to the aftermath and ensure everyone’s safety in the event of an incident caused by the storm.
- Step 4: Implement the plan. Always stay informed of the storms path and be conservative with your decisions to shut-down and evacuate if necessary. Storm tracking can be found at the National Hurricane Center website.
The Florida DEP has a checklist for hurricane planning that could be re-written for anyone’s use at the provided link: https://floridadep.gov/sites/default/files/Hurricane%20Preparedness%20Checksheet508Compliant.pdf
OSHA also has an article about preparedness with some more general notes that can be found here: https://www.osha.gov/hurricane/preparedness
Moving back to our project, we are super excited about the site visit we have planned for next week on October 4! We known it will be a visit full of learning opportunities that will help us move this project forward. We are also diligently working on our PDR draft, in which our simulation is really starting to take shape. We hope to have an update on a fully functional simulation soon!
References:
[1] DOE. Is your plant prepared for a hurricane?, 2006. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/40324.pdf.