PREPARING

FOR
EMERGENCY
RESPONSE
IN AN EMERGENCY, what do you do
when…?”
• The answer to this question can save your life or the lives of others, or
simply turn a potentially harmful situation into a minor incident.
• One of the four principles of safety is preparing for emergencies.
• Planning in advance about how to respond to emergencies and
situations in labs where something has gone wrong and taking quick
action is necessary to minimize the damage or harm.
SULFURIC ACID SPILL
• A student was working in a laboratory handling a flask containing sulfuric acid.
• Someone was not careful and knocked the flask off the bench and it hit the
floor, spattering acid onto the student’s shirt and jeans.
• He went to the emergency shower across the room and on the way took off
his shirt that was already in shreds from the acid – he dropped it into the sink.
• Using the safety shower, he was able to wash off the acid quickly so that it
only left temporary red marks on his skin.
• His jeans were also shredded by the acid.
• His rapid response prevented any serious burns.
Emergencies Requiring Evacuation – Being
Prepared to Act Immediately!
• The most likely laboratory emergencies, although still relatively rare,
are fires, chemical spills, or common injuries such as minor burns
and cuts.
• The first and most natural response to some emergency is a moment
of panic, particularly if you fear that your own safety is in danger.
• So, the first, best response is simply to recognize that moment of
panic, take a deep breath to calm down (a bit), and then decide how
to respond based on your training.
“Fight or Flight?” When You Need to Leave the Lab

• If you hear a fire alarm, you should immediately leave the laboratory.
• If you are using a gas burner or something electrical and you have time to turn this off without
putting yourself at risk, then turn it off.
• What if the emergency is closer to you?
• First, you should loudly call or shout to everyone in the vicinity that there is an emergency.
• The next choice that you have to make in any emergency is either to try to deal with the
emergency or simply to leave the area or building (while being sure that someone in charge knows
about the problem).
• Don’t put yourself at unnecessary risk.
• Professional emergency responders, such as firefighters, have a clear priority of objectives when
faced with hazardous situations:
• 1. Life safety
• 2. Minimize property loss
• Firefighters make careful judgments about their own safety as they try to rescue
others and/or minimize property loss.
• The 21st century motto in the United States fire service is: “Everybody goes home.”
No one should ever die trying to save a building; this is not good risk-reward analysis.
• The firefighters’ priorities should be your priorities too.
• If you have any concerns about your own safety and/or the safety of others, the first
and best response is to leave the area.
• In doing so, you should alert others in the same lab, or nearby labs, of the emergency.
• These individuals may have more safety training and ultimately are more responsible
for the lab and lab incidents than you are (as a student).
• Depending on the size of the emergency, you may also wish to consider
pulling a fire alarm since this will affect an evacuation of the building.
• Fire alarm stations are almost always located near exterior exit doors or
stairwell doors.
• Pulling a fire alarm to evacuate a building in the event of a significant
chemical spill that presents a health hazard to building occupants is a
reasonable action, even if there is not a fire.
• If you pull the fire alarm you should plan to meet the fire department
when they arrive, and tell them the nature of the emergency, whether
anyone is injured or in danger, and where this emergency is located.
• In order to leave a building you must know where the exits are! Fire codes require that
exit signs be clearly marked so finding an exit should be easy.
• Exit signs are typically located well above eye level near exit doors and stairwells, but
it is possible, under heavy fire conditions, that smoke will obscure these signs.
• This discussion assumes that you are making a choice to leave the building far sooner
than when “heavy smoke conditions” develop.
• Knowing where exits are located is a good personal safe practice, not only for the
laboratory, but for other places you go, such as your dormitory, the theater, shopping
malls, a hotel, a restaurant, or a place of business.
• Take notice of these when you enter a building.
• When staying in a hotel with a long corridor of rooms, count the number of doors
between your room and the exit so you can find the exit when crawling in heavy smoke!
• Perhaps surprisingly, humans tend to leave a building or room by the same door that they
entered, even if that is not the closest exit! Modern laboratories are required to have at
least two exits; when you first enter a lab you should take note of the location of the
“other” exit since it may be the preferred rout in an emergency.
• For a significant event, someone needs to call 911 and/or campus security.
• Teaching assistants or other instructors will likely do this since they are in more responsible
positions, but if you have any doubt about whether this was done, it is safest to call 911.
• Do not assume that pulling a fire alarm notifies the fire department; sometimes it does
and sometimes it doesn’t, depending on how the system is designed.
• If you call 911, the dispatcher will want to know the nature of the emergency and the
exact location, including the building address and the room number where the
emergency exists.
• In many business and industrial facilities, employees are instructed to gather at a
predetermined assembly location outside a structure so that all persons can be
accounted for during an evacuation.
• Ideally, this should happen at colleges and universities too, but the transient
nature of the population of a building at any point in time makes 100%
accountability impossible from a practical point of view.
• However, your instructor may request that your class or lab section gather at a
particular location so that some level of accountability can be determined. If you
know that someone has been left behind, you should notify an emergency
responder.
• You should not re-enter a building after an evacuation until specifically
instructed to do so by emergency personnel.
Mitigating the
Emergency
• There are a limited number of situations
where you, as a student, may be the best
person to handle an emergency.
• Often a quick response to a small fire can
prevent it from becoming a big fire (see
Figure).
• A Small Fire Turns into a Large Fire.
• Most small fires can be easily
extinguished, but in some laboratories or
chemical stockrooms, small fire can spread
rapidly, particularly if there is an explosion
that starts the fire.
• Some chemical spills can be handled quickly and easily.
• Your primary responsibility is your own safety and you should not
attempt to fight fires that are too big or that you have not been
trained to fight.
• Nor should you try to clean up chemical spills unless you can do this
safely and appropriately.
• Some emergency procedures that require immediate evacuation present ethical
dilemmas if injured persons who cannot remove themselves might be left behind.
• There is no simple answer to this dilemma.
• Most people would put themselves at some risk to help save another, but there
are circumstances when a victim’s injuries may be deadly or it may simply be the
case that a small rescuer simply cannot successfully remove a very large
victim/patient.
• In situations where someone is “left behind,” it is critical to immediately inform
emergency responders who are better trained and equipped to rescue people.
• A “worst case” scenario is for one person to try to help another unsuccessfully
and become yet another victim.
Non-Laboratory-Related Emergencies

• There may be emergencies that require you to seek shelter rather than
evacuating.
• These emergencies could be storms, tornadoes, or police emergencies.
• Usually there are designated places known as “shelter in-place” locations
within buildings and these are the safest locations for people to gather
during these emergencies.
• These locations may be interior hallways, stairwells, closets, or other interior
rooms without windows but with adequate architectural support for shelter.
• Always avoid windows or glass doors that may be shattered and become
flying shrapnel that could seriously injure you or others.
• It is best to learn about shelter-in-place locations before emergencies take place.
• Ideally, your instructor should be “in charge” in these situations and help you
determine what to do, but it is also wise to know what to do without such
guidance.
• Shelter-in-place locations are important for persons with physical disabilities who
may not be able to easily exit the building.
• If there are any persons with physical disabilities in your area, you should make
an effort to know about the shelter-in-place locations.
• If an emergency occurs and you can assist a person with a disability without
putting yourself in danger, then consider helping that person to the shelter-in-
place location
• If you cannot assist them, let them know that you will notify the fire department
of their location.
• In the case of a police emergency, you will need to follow the instructions of law
enforcement officials.
• Many campuses now have elaborate protocols in place to respond to terrorist
acts or other similar threats and situations.
• As in the situation with fires or spills, it is best to turn off equipment before
leaving a lab if it is possible to do so safely.
• If electrical power is lost in a building, laboratory fume hoods will not work.
• Any materials in the hoods should be “capped,” if it is possible to do so safely
before leaving.
In an emergency:

• Stay calm.
• Mitigate the emergency, if you are trained to do so and can do so safely.
• Leave the area if instructed to do so, or if you think it is unsafe to remain.
• Pull fire alarms to evacuate buildings, if necessary.
• Call 911 and provide specific details about the emergency.
• Know where the exits are located.
• Help injured persons, if it is safe to do so.
• Know where “sheltered locations” are in your building.
• Have someone with specific knowledge of the emergency meet emergency
responders to provide them with information they will need about the emergency
FIRE EMERGENCIES
• FIRE FROM ELECTRICAL WIRING
• A beaker of acetone, a very flammable organic solvent, was placed near a
hot plate.
• The acetone fumes, heavier than air, crept along the top of the bench and
at some point the worn electrical wiring of the hot plate generated a
spark and ignited the fumes.
• An instructor’s clothing caught fire.
• One alert student safely extinguished the fire and another wrapped the
instructor in a fire blanket.
• There were no serious injuries or damage.
• Fires in laboratories can be incredibly dangerous.
• Besides the danger of receiving burns, burning chemicals can produce
toxic fumes and the risk of explosions.
• Fortunately, in introductory lab courses the nature and amounts of
flammable substances are quite limited so that “worst case” scenarios
and explosions are not likely.
Classes of Fires

• Fires that you might expect to encounter in introductory laboratories

typically will involve “ordinary
• combustibles materials” or “flammable liquids.” These phrases
introduce us to the four general categories of fire, shown in Table
2.1.2.1.
Class A fires
• Most fires that people (and firefighters) encounter in non-laboratory
situations are Class A fires.
• Some examples are burning houses and their contents, clothes and
wood, burning cars, a trash dumpster on fire, and forest fires.
• As we will see below, these Class A fires are readily extinguished
using water.
Class B fires
• Most laboratories do not use water (extinguishers) because fires with
chemicals and electrical equipment should be extinguished with other agents.
• Class B fires are burning organic liquids.
• Gasoline that is burning inside an automobile engine is a controlled Class B
fire.
• Using “lighter fluid” on a charcoal grill is a Class B fire.
• Many organic solvents used in chemistry labs generate Class B fires.
• Trying to extinguish a fire involving organic solvents with water is
counterproductive since most organic solvents do not mix with water and will
float on top of water.).
Class B fires
• A stream of water is more likely to spread the solvent and fire.
• For this reason, water should be not used to extinguish solvent fires.
• A different type of extinguishing agent is needed for Class B fires
Class C fires
• Class C fires are any fires (Class A or Class B) that also involve
energized electricity.
• A burning computer is a Class C fire.
• Toast burning in a toaster (that is “on”) is a Class C fire.
• Since water conducts electricity, using water on these fires allows the
possibility of spreading the electrical charge back to the person using
water to extinguish the fire.
• Since this raises the possibility of fatal electrical shock, water should
never be used on a Class C fire.
Class D fires
• Class D fires are pretty rare outside of specific chemical laboratories or
workplaces.
• Some industrial processes that involve very hot metals, such as
aluminum or magnesium, can lead to a fire if water contacts these metals.
• In labs, we often use elemental sodium or lithium and these are very
reactive with water.
• Compounds called “hydrides” are also very reactive and will catch fire
upon contact with water.
• Class D fires are called “active metal” fires.
The Fire Triangle and the Fire Tetrahedron

• For many years, fire scientists considered fire to consist of three

components: oxygen, fuel, and heat.
• These three features comprised the fire triangle.
• We can use the fire triangle to think about how to prevent a fire from
starting by not allowing all three components to meet.
• Keeping any one of them away from the other two will prevent a fire
from starting.
• We use the fire triangle to understand how to prevent fires.
• We now better understand the details of the chemistry of fire and this
triangle has been replaced by the fire tetrahedron because there is a
fourth element that is needed to explain how fires are extinguished.
• The fourth component is the chain reaction.
• By removing any one of these four components we can extinguish a
fire.
• We use the fire tetrahedron to understand how to extinguish fires.
• Let’s look at each part of the tetrahedron.
Fuel
• Fuel is an obvious component of a fire.
• The most common fuels are Class A materials, like paper, wood, cloth,
or plastic
• or Class B liquids, such as gasoline or some common organic solvents
used in labs.
• Removing the fuel is usually not easy to do although sometimes
containing the fuel or moving it (such as taking a burning trash can
outside) may stop the spread of the fire by limiting the availability of
additional fuel.
oxygen
• All fires involve oxidizing agents (that oxidize or burn the fuel) and this
is almost always atmospheric oxygen,O2.
• If we can remove air from the fire, or vice versa, the fire will
extinguish. This is sometimes easy.
• A small beaker of flammable liquid on fire will quickly extinguish if a
watch glass (or other noncombustible “lid”) is placed on the top of
the open beaker.
• The remaining air in the beaker will be quickly consumed and the fire
will self-extinguish.
• Similarly, a piece of paper on fire will extinguish if a book is placed on
top of it.
• The book excludes air from the site of combustion.
• Or, the traditional “stop, drop, and roll” technique extinguishes
burning clothing when one “rolls” on the fire and momentarily
excludes oxygen.
• Finally, if we can “coat” a burning liquid with a powder or other
substance that excludes the atmospheric oxygen from the liquid, the
fire will extinguish.
A source of energy
• A source of energy, usually heat or an electric spark, is required to
start and sustain a fire.
• Removing the heat is done with water since water is such a great
cooling agent.
• And since fuel and atmospheric oxygen are commonly available, most
fire prevention measures are designed to prevent the initial source of
heat from starting a fire.
The chain reaction
• The chain reaction is the least obvious component of the fire
tetrahedron since this is occurring at the molecular level and we don’t
observe it directly.
• The exact mechanism by which chemicals burn is complicated but we
know it involves a catalytic chain reaction.
• Some extinguishers work not by removing fuel, oxygen, or heat but by
interfering with the chemical reaction in a fashion that stops the fire.
What If You Are on Fire?
RAMP
• The RAMP model can be used to think about fire hazards and how to prepare for fire
emergencies.
• Recognize the flammable and combustible materials, particularly organic solvents, in the
laboratory.
• Recognize any electrical equipment that may pose a fire hazard or the presence of any active
metals.
• Assess the risk of the fire hazard by considering the quantities of materials and possible ignition
• sources.
• Minimize the risk by using flammable liquids and active metals appropriately and by checking
• electrical equipment.
• Prepare for fire emergencies by knowing where extinguishers are located, how to use them,
and where exits and fire alarms are located.