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911 verses 9-911

Over the past several weeks, the question of using 911, versus 9‑911, for life threatening emergencies has come up during safety meetings. Both numbers work. Both go directly to the Palo Alto Fire Department Dispatch office and emergency responders from SLAC's Station 7 will be dispatched to your emergency. If it's easier for you to remember, just dial 911 (like you would at home).

SLAC's Emergency Management Program is migrating the entire SLAC site to a common process for contacting emergency responders. This migration includes contractors, visitors and guests who may not know our phone system. By now, you should have all received your new badge cards with the incident notification information (above image).

Questions have also come up regarding the use of x5555 (650-926-5555) to contact Security and SLAC's in-house emergency responders for non-life threatening incidents. This provides an easy-to-remember number for the reporting of non-life threatening issues. The benefits of calling your supervisor, then x5555, is threefold: First, the people who most likely can help mitigate and stabilize an incident, and who can shorten the recovery time, are dispatched in an orderly process. Second, people who need to keep SLAC and Department of Energy management informed are notified quickly. Third, emergency communication and resource management is conducted in an orderly process, as contrasted to an ad-hoc response.

If you need further information or would like an Environment, Safety and Health representative to provide more information to your department contact Lance Lougée, assistant fire marshal and emergency management coordinator.

—Lance Lougée
  
SLAC Today, September 16, 2008