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Disaster Drill: Practice Makes Perfect

As one of the nations largest insurance companies, USAA is in the business of managing risk. So it makes sense that the company uses exercises, simulations and drills to learn how to respond in the event of a disaster.

IT'S 12:45 P.M.Employees begin to evacuate the campus. Part of continuity planning involves preparing for the unknown. The goal at USAA was to begin challenging people's emotions so that they could learn how they would react and then plan for that reaction. Beyond faking deaths, the scheme called for simulated injuries. Courtesy of some artfully applied makeup, a dozen employees were gashed, caked with blood and placed on the lawn where other employees were being evacuated. Performance Measurement Analyst Dave Terris's eye was impaled by a sharp needle, and Bill Blauser, a business project manager, had an abdominal hemorrhage. Denise Ezquerra, a billing support manager, was stricken with what's termed sludge (you don't want to know) as a result of anthrax exposure. To further the role-playing, the employees had been coached as to how people with those wounds would react. Obviously, the evacuated employees knew that the situation was fake, but the moaning and pleas for help from their injured coworkers added a dose of reality, and also gave USAA's safety and environmental affairs group a chance to practice maintaining employee calm.

To add to the realism, employees exposed in the mock anthrax attack had to go through a decontamination shower set up for possible hazardous-material exposure (employees were forewarned to wear bathing suits). They were then escorted by specially trained USAA employees who guided them into a HazMat tent for further decontamination. After leaving the tent, injured employees were escorted to tarps where USAA's medical personnel were on hand to patch up the wounded. While staffers rehearsed the evacuation and decontamination process, small groups of USAA employees acted as observers, making notes about possible improvements.

Far from resenting these elaborate machinations and the time away from their job, USAA employees are enthusiastic about these exercises. "Before 9/11, if you conducted a fire drill, people ignored it," says Wendi Strong, senior vice president of corporate communications. "But now they don't see it as an inconvenience; it's a valued exercisesomething that their employer is doing to protect them."

IT'S 1:30 P.M.Local news stations are onsite requesting a human interest story. In a crisis, communication is often the first part of the corporate machinery to break down. Recognizing this, USAA has put a great deal of time and money into building as many avenues and techniques for emergency communication as possible. "We're highly dependent on our internal communications networkvideo, e-mail, telephones and intercom," says Yates. "If we had something really bad happen, all wires might be cut and we could have thousands of people wondering what to do." During the exercise, the SMTs experimented with using both cell phones and walkie-talkies to communicate with each other. In addition, the company bought 18 satellite phones—at $1,250 each—and dispersed them among senior staff in the event that the whole phone network goes down.