In the first two parts of this series, we pieced together the outlines of the employer's legal obligation to manage the risk of avian influenza. We divided these obligations into two groups: The first, which we analyzed last week, is to educate workers and ensure that they practice proper hygiene; the second is based not on OSHA/OHS but business continuity principles. It involves first and foremost the creation and implementation of a pandemic preparedness plan to anticipate and take steps to minimize the potential business disruptions a pandemic would cause. Let's look at how to create such a plan.

Sources of Guidance for Business Planning

In North America, the best source of guidance for business planning has come from Canada . Provincial health ministries from three provinces - British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario - have published detailed guidelines about how to draft a preparedness plan. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also published a checklist on business planning but it is far less detailed than the Canadian materials.

Substantively, the principles set out in the provincial guidelines (and HHS checklist) are essentially the same. What differs is how they're organized and described. The BC Guidelines offer the clearest and most straightforward approach. So let's base our discussion on the BC model.

The 10 Principles of Business Preparedness Planning

The BC Guidelines organize the planning process into 10 discrete objectives:

Objective 1: Getting Organized

The starting point is to organize a team to take charge of planning for your organization:

Step 1: Pick an existing committee or assemble a new group that includes the safety coordinator, the person in charge of emergency planning (if that person is different) and somebody familiar with labor issues. Even though none of the provincial Guidelines mention it, you should involve your company's safety committee in the planning process.

Step 2: Appoint a senior management official to head the planning team.

Step 3: Establish contacts to monitor workers' health in each business unit.

Step 4: Establish a contact to stay in touch with the state or provincial Ministry of Health and other reliable public sources of information about the influenza situation nationally, regionally and in your community.

Objective 2: Assess Risks

Treat the risk of pandemic influenza like you would any other workplace hazard and conduct a risk assessment. Evaluate how big a threat influenza represents to your organization:

Step 1: Assess the vulnerability of each business unit, operation and facility. For example, are there certain facilities of your company that the Health Ministry might order shut down during a pandemic?

Step 2: Gauge the vulnerability of your business if influenza threatened the viability of any unit, operation and facility. Think of ways - such as opening an alternate facility - to keep operations going with minimal disruption if problems arise.

Step 3: Consider what role, if any, the government might call on you to play during a crisis. For example, might the government take over parts of your workforce or facility to perform emergency services?

Objective 3: Protect Your Workers' Health

This objective basically includes the education and infection control measures described in Parts 1 and 2 of this series and we won't repeat them here.

Objective 4: Adjust Your Employment Policies

Your current employment policies might not be suitable to address problems that can arise during a pandemic. So you might want to adjust your policies and/or create new ones covering issues such as:

• Absences of workers who contract the disease;
• Use of temporary workers, overtime and cancellation of vacation and other special measures to make up for labor shortfalls;
• Discipline of workers for failing to follow hygiene or infection control guidelines; and
• Replacement of and/or leaves of absences for workers who become infected or have to leave work to tend to family members who get sick.

Objective 5: Plan to Keep the Business Running

To preserve business continuity, the provincial guidelines recommend that companies:

Step 1: List crucial business functions that pandemic influenza might disrupt. Determine which functions are a priority to maintain and which you can do without if you had to.

Step 2: Identify the skills and personnel needed to keep the priority functions running.

Step 3: Look for alternative sources to replace the skills and personnel associated with such functions on a short-term basis. First, consider sources from within your organization, such as the retraining and reassigning of existing workers and bringing retirees back to work. If you need to go outside the organization, make sure you have access to employment agencies and other sources of replacement labor. And in either case, make sure you have the infrastructure to train and absorb replacement/reassigned workers.

Step 4: In lieu of or in conjunction with Step 3, develop a plan to modify, reduce or halt specific functions - or even close the business temporarily - to cope with the impact of a pandemic-related disruption.

Step 5: Establish an organizational structure to coordinate the emergency response and continuity of operations.

Conclusion

SafetyXChange will be off next Monday in observance of the Presidents' Day holiday in the U.S. We'll conclude our series on February 26 with a look at objectives 6 thru 10.

THIS DATE IN HISTORY

February 12, 1935

By Glenn Demby

U.S.S. Macon as she was .... And is today.

Helium-filled airships known as zeppelins were flying tinder boxes. The Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, NJ, in May 1937, demonstrated the danger of zeppelin flight. But the Hindenburg wasn't the only zeppelin tragedy. Two years earlier, 72 years ago today, another great airship was lost in a catastrophe.

The U.S. Navy's U.S.S. Macon was commissioned in 1933. Built by a U.S.-German joint venture firm known as Goodyear-Zeppelin, the Macon had a hollow steel hull and three interior keels. It was powered by eight large 560-horsepower engines and could reach speeds up to 87 miles per hour. It had 12 helium-filled gas cells made from gelatine-latex fabric. At 785 feet, it was almost twice as long as the Hindenburg.

But, ultimately, its luck was not much better. In the winter of 1935, the Macon, which carried five Sparrowhawk bi-planes, was assigned to patrol the Pacific Ocean . To get there, she had to cross the continent. The Macon encountered turbulence over Texas. A ring in the tail section buckled and two girders broke. Although she reached California safely, Macon was badly in need of repairs.

On February 12, 1935, with repairs still incomplete, Macon was heading for base after taking part in fleet maneuvers when she hit a storm off Point Sur , California . Her weakened upper tailfin failed and Macon couldn't maintain altitude. It took her 20 minutes to fall 4,850 feet to the sea.

The good news: Only two of the Macon's 76 crew members perished. Some managed to swim to shore three kilometers away. Others were rescued. Warm waters and the Navy's recent introduction of life jackets and inflatable rafts prevented what could have been a much greater tragedy.

As a postscript, last September, scientists found the Macon wreck site and sent an underwater robot to film it. Unfortunately, the robot was unable to find the two things researchers were most interested in examining: the tailfin and the corpses of the victims.

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