Safety Drills are Fun n’ Games
“This is a drill, this is a drill, Code Red!” This is the sound you will hear over our campus radios when we practice our safety drills. Most companies run routine drills, many may cover an office fire, a missing child, maybe a bomb scare. At a chimpanzee sanctuary, we also have to run drills for chimp escapes. No matter how much we love the chimps and provide them with exemplary care, the reality is, it could happen.
Every day there is an assigned Emergency Response Coordinator, or an ERC. They are responsible for calling a code and issuing orders in the event of an emergency. Other staff have various roles assigned, skills they have trained and been certified to carry out when adrenaline is pumping. We also have annual meetings with our local emergency responders, keeping police, fire, and EMTs updated on our campus layout and giving them access to our radio channel so they listen to our own plans during a real emergency to determine if and when they need to assist.
But the only true way to prepare is to run drills.
Drilling it in
Some of the safety drills are scheduled, that way new staff have time to study and prepare to be checked off the roles they are applying for. Other drills are unscheduled and the drill coordinator simply declares a drill is happening…RIGHT NOW! These truly test our teams skills with adrenaline and lack of preparedness, the way a real emergency would more likely happen.
If you have been involved in disaster preparedness, you know that drills may be something that a team groans about. While everyone can agree they are important, it adds a burden to your day as the daily chores still have to be done on top of the drill. That’s why some of our drills have a game element to them.
Polyhedral Dice
To bring in a little fun but also keep it real by making the safety drill details unpredictable, we use polyhedral dice. (If you play Dungeons and Dragons or other RPGs, you are familiar with these die sets.) The die coordinate with drill cards, below is sample from a recent tornado drill. The ERC rolled a 10-sided die to determine how many locations were impacted by the tornado. Then each location rolled a 4-sided die and opened their envelope to follow instructions like the below.
If your Villa has been hit by the tornado per the ERC’s die roll, one of the following will occur based on your own die roll:
1 = False alarm, some debris hit your building but there is no damage. Call that all is clear!
2 = The anti-room is compromised, a tree has come through a window and you have been hit by shards of glass. You are bleeding from a large gash on your primary arm but able to still move about. Call that you are injured and your team-mate should bandage you. If you are needed to assist for the remainder of the drill, you may NOT use your bandaged arm.
3 = The bedroom is compromised but the caging is still intact. Shift the chimps onto the porch for security. You may not assist with any other portion of the drill until your chimps are shifted.
4 = The tunnel has been compromised and there are chimps in the patio! They are going in and out. Call a code and respond as needed to secure your chimps.
By using multiple die, the same drill scenario will play out differently each and every time.
Do the chimps get to play?
The chimps are never involved in the fast-paced live action safety drills. We do train them to respond to certain requests such as ringing a dinner bell to recall them from the habitat to their secure indoor housing (which we would do in the event of a real tornado). Large plush toys are used to stand in for chimps when the drill involves a chimp in an area that we need to retrieve them from.
Interns and volunteers do get to participate in drills! Join our intern program and you might get to play a victim in a future drill. A little squirt of ketchup on your forehead and a card laid on your chest indicating you are unconscious is a great curve ball to add into any drill game.
Real life
Our drills may be fun n’ games, but real life emergencies do happen. With the right training, our team steps up and secures the situation and resolves the emergency efficiently without further incident. The biggest threat on our forested property is falling trees in high wind storms. We rigorously trim limbs and remove dying trees that are near the perimeter fences and housing of the chimp enclosures. But with wet soil and high winds, even a beautifully healthy tree may be toppled, such as happened in the fall of 2020 with Hurricane Zeta.
Thankfully, only the structure and some equipment were damaged by this tree. No chimps or humans were injured during that storm. Our facilities team has removed our equipment but the entire structure still needs to be demolished and rebuilt.
Safety drills help keep our skills sharp and our minds prepared. Adding in the dice means even the drill coordinator can not predict how the drill will actually play out. After each run, we debrief as a team and identify areas where we could improve. And improve we do.
Drill games do not result in winners and losers. They result in a stronger team.
You can assist in keeping our team in good communication by donating a new radio from our wishlist.