Protecting Life and Minimizing Injury, Reducing Exposure of Physical Assets and Optimizing Loss Control
Through the intelligence gathered from CCTV, security and disaster control personnel should move all personnel to places of safety and shelter. Personnel assigned to disaster control and remaining in a threatened area should he protected by using CCTV to monitor their safety as well as access to these locations. By such monitoring, advance notice is available if a means of support and assistance for those persons is required or if injured personnel must be rescued or relieved.
Assets should be stored or secured properly before an emergency, so they will be less vulnerable to theft or loss. CCTV is an important tool for continually monitoring sale areas during and after a disaster to ensure that material is not removed. In an emergency or disaster, the well documented plan will call for specific personnel to locate highly valued assets, secure them, and evacuate personnel.
After the emergency situation has been brought under control, CCTV and security personnel can monitor and maintain the security of assets. They can also help determine that employees are safe and have returned to normal work.
For purposes of planning, insurance, and evaluation by management and security, CCTV coverage of critical areas and operations during an emergency can save an organization considerable money. CCTV recordings of assets lost or stolen or personnel injured or killed can support a company’s claim that it was not negligent and that it initiated a prudent emergency and disaster plan prior to the event. Although CCTV can provide crucial documentation of an event, it should be supplemented with high-resolution photographs of specific instances or events.
Moreover, if fences or walls are destroyed or damaged in a disaster, CCTV can help prevent and document intrusion or looting by employees, spectators, or other outsiders.
In the overall disaster plan, shutting down equipment such as machinery, utilities, processes, and so on, must be considered. If furnaces, gas generators, electrical power equipment, boilers, high-pressure air or oil systems, chemical equipment, or rapidly rotating machinery could cause damage if left unattended, they should be shut down as soon as possible. CCTV can help determine if the equipment has been shut down properly, if personnel must enter die area to do so, or if it must be shut down by other means.
While a good emergency plan is essential, it should not be tested for the first time in an actual disaster situation. Deficiencies are always discovered during testing. Also, a test serves to train the personnel who will carry out the plan if necessary. CCTV can help evaluate the plan to identify shortcomings and show personnel what they did right and wrong. Through such peer review a practical and efficient plan can be put in place to minimize losses to the organization.
During any emergency or disaster, primary power and communications between locations will probably be disrupted. Therefore, a standby power-generation system should be provided for emergency monitoring and response. This standby power, comprised of a backup gas-powered generator or an uninterruptible power supply,
with DC batteries to extend backup operation time, will keep emergency lighting, communications, and strategic CCTV equipment on-line as needed. Most installations use a power sensing device that monitors the normal supply of power at various locations. When the device senses that power has been lost, the various backup equipments automatically switch to the emergency power source.
A prudent security plan anticipating an emergency will include a means to power vital CCTV, audio, and other sensor equipment to ensure its operation during the event. Since emergency CCTV and audio communications must be maintained over remote distances, alternative communication pathways should be supplied, in the form of cither auxiliary hard-wired cable or a wireless (RF, microwave, infrared) system. It is usually practical to provide a backup path to only the critical cameras, not all of them. The standby generator supplying power to the CCTV, safety, and emergency equipment must be sized properly. For equipment that normally operates on 12()-volt AC, for example, inverters arc used to convert the low voltage from the DC batteries (typically 12 or 24 volts DC) to the required 120 volts AC.