When we developed our EM plan, consulting Ginny's excellent book we made a matrix of potential events and situated them by their probability and likely impact. One was that we are about 100 yards from an interstate, and the possibility of an OTR truck carrying liquid chemicals could crash near our building. You really do have to look outside, up, down, and across to identify potential disasters.

In the case of this clinic: small "urgi-care" clinics are popping up all over our region, in buildings so small that if they were hit even by a small plane and erupted into flames, no portion of the building would be spared.

Gary Link, CRM
Pittsburgh, PA
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-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Larry Medina
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 1:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Vital Records Protection Planning

Last night, there was a light plane crash in the area south of San Jose in
the rural community of Watsonville.  Sadly, 2 adults and 2 children lost
there lives when a single engine plane developed an engine problem shortly
after takeoff, came down at the end of the runway and skidded across a
parking lot into a building.

The building it crashed into was a Women's Health Clinic associated with a
Regional Hospital Complex- the plane went completely through the exterior
wall into a a large room and burst into a ball of flames.

When they showed film of the cleanup and firefight, one thing I happened to
notice was the room it crashed into was filled with file cabinets and open
shelving and all of the records were on fire and obviously being completely
destroyed. 

Two things that came to mind for me (as a Records Manager) when I saw that were:

- Was there no location better than an outside wall office to house the
records in, given a car could have crashed through the windows, a window
could have blown out in a storm, or with privacy concerns for medical
records, someone could have seen patient names on the files from outside?

- Did no one consider the potential threat of a plane crash when deciding
where to store the records when they were less than 100 yards from the end
of a runway?

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