By: Katherine Pickett Emergency Cleanup Preparation and safety steps can help businesses, offices, schools and other facilities recover faster. A Proactive Approach To M Katherine Pickett is a frequent writer for the professional cleaning and building indus-tries. She can be reached at [email protected] for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search key-word: Emergency planning . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select DIRECTORY from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: Chemicals . Many times, while watching the news on television about a terrible storm, flood or hurricane, we think to ourselves, “That’s terrible, but it can’t happen here.” It may be time for all of us to change our mind-sets because in the past few years we have had major weather events and natural disasters in some of the most unexpected areas. Businesses, like the general public, tend to take a reactive approach to major weather events, deal-ing with them as they come. However, taking a proactive position can make the cleanup operation easier and can help get businesses, offices, schools and other facilities up and running faster. This is where cleaning professionals come in. In most cases, cleaning and restoration crews will be some of the first to start dealing with the af-termath of a storm, and their level of preparation can have a significant impact on the cleanup ef-forts. “The first step in the process is to have a plan,” says Debby Davis, product manager for Powr-Flite, a manufacturer of professional cleaning and restoration equipment. “Some sort of emergency preparedness plan can help minimize loss and get things up and running as soon as possible.” According to Davis, a proactive emergency pre-paredness plan specific to contract cleaners and other cleaning professionals should include such things as the following: “That’s terrible, but it can’t happen here,” is a poor emergency plan. Be proactive and ready, should disaster strike. 20 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • December 2013 Image courtesy of Kenneth Benjamin Reed /iStock/Thinkstock
CMM – Archives December 2013: 20
