Disaster Recovery Journal, Fall 2009

adequate medical treatment available and a medical evacuation plan in place. In many regions of the world, the only Level 1 trauma facility is in the capital city. Some industrial sites may be several hours from such a facility. Additionally, the medical facilities may not be comparable to western facilities. A good medical evacuation plan should include: the location of nearest facility that can stabilize a patient, a plan to evacuate a person to an

appropriate trauma facility, and medical evacuation to the country of the corporate headquarters or the headquarters of the injured person. There are companies that provide medical evacuations around the world and specialized insurance plans to cover individuals annually or for a particular trip.

Emergency managers should maintain a list of these companies and also coordinate with the company’s medical insur-

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ance provider to determine what will be covered. The understanding of these issues becomes very important. For example, the decision to launch a medical evacuation plane from Germany to Nigeria will have to be made quickly due to the long duration of the flight. Therefore, a hasty decision could bring the company large unnecessary expenditures, while at the same time, waiting too long to make the decision could cost the injured person his or her life. An entire article could be dedicated to medical treatment and evacuation in austere regions and emerging markets but the aforementioned points are the most critical.

Lastly, a good public information plan should be in place as soon as possible. All attempts should be made to get ahead of the story. For example, it would be much better for corporate media personnel to be able to say something such as, “Although we have not had direct contact with the chief executive officer since the earthquake, we expect to hear from his party soon. We have a robust communications contingency plan in place that includes the immediate evacuation of any medical casualties.”

The actual script may need tweaking but this type of comment will help stop the market watchers and “technical advisors” from beginning to speculate about what happened, who might succeed the senior executive, and what turmoil the absence of a missing executive might cause the corporation.

Large companies with numerous corporate offices should make sure the company speaks with one voice. This requires a public relations policy must be established prior to an incident. For example, in the case of a situation that affects one corporate office in a particular country, the company policy should dictate whether public relations issues will be handled at the office in that country or the company headquarters. All press conferences and company Web site postings should be coordinated between the corporate headquarters and the corporate office located in the country of the incident.

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Will Gunther is a former military special operations member and is currently a disaster preparedness product design consultant and trainer for World Prep Inc. He can be reached at sales@worldprep.com.