A building emergency preparedness plan is a written document naming who does what in the first five minutes of a fire, an outage, a flood, or a medical call. Buildings running URBI handle the notification half of it. The plan itself is yours to write, and this article gives it away.
Everything below is US framed. Fire code, drill frequency, and distribution rules vary by state, city, and occupancy, so confirm specifics with your own fire marshal.
What goes in the plan document?
The plan is a short binder with five parts: a cover page, written procedures, floor plans marked with evacuation routes, a site plan showing exits and the assembly point, and annexes. West Metro Fire Rescue, applying the International Fire Code to apartments and dorms, uses that structure and says plans are "reviewed and updated by the facility annually".
The written procedures cover eleven things:
- Authority and scope. Address, height, construction, occupancies, manager of record, code basis, review date.
- Hazard list. The eight below, plus local risks such as wildfire or hurricane.
- Protective action per hazard. Evacuate, shelter in place, relocate inside, defend in place, or barricade.
- Routes and assembly. Both stairs, the outdoor assembly point, separate garage and retail instructions.
- Notification. Every channel, in the order you use them.
- Roles. Incident lead, deputy, communications, lobby control, utility shutoff, resident assistance.
- Assistance annex. The vulnerable resident list and its rules.
- Drills and training. What, who, how often, who signs off.
- Supplies. What is in the closet and when each item was checked.
- Records. Incident log, photos, notifications sent, claim number.
- Distribution. Who gets it, in which languages, and how you prove they got it.
Where the building employs staff, OSHA's emergency action plan rule covers the employee side and requires that plan be "in writing, kept in the workplace, and available to employees for review".
Which incidents should a residential building plan for?
Eight incidents cover almost everything a residential building faces. For each, write down the first five minutes, who is called, what staff do, and what residents are told.
| Incident | First five minutes | Who is called | What staff do | What residents are told |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | Out, door closed behind you, alarm pulled, 911 from safety. | 911 first, always. Then alarm monitoring and the on call manager. | Meet the fire department at the curb with keys, floor plans, and the assistance list. Never enter smoke. | Evacuate or shelter, which stairs, where to gather. FDNY is blunt: "Never use the elevator". |
| Extended power loss | Confirm the scope: building, block, or region. Check emergency lighting. | Utility emergency line, elevator contractor, generator vendor, on call manager. | Sweep every elevator car for trapped riders. Then paper notices at entrances and lobbies, then the assistance list. | What is out, what works, the restoration estimate, no generators indoors. |
| Water and flood | Find the source. Close the nearest isolation valve. Photograph before anyone touches anything. | On call manager, plumber, restoration contractor. 911 if water reaches electrical equipment. | Contain, place barriers, log when water was first seen, knock on units below. | Stay or go, what not to touch, how to report damage. Outside, Ready.gov: "Do not walk, swim or drive through flood waters." |
| Elevator entrapment | Talk to the passengers. Help is coming. Do not pry the doors. | Elevator contractor emergency line. Add 911 if anyone is unwell. | Stay at the door and keep talking. Note car number and floor. | Which bank is out and when it returns. Nothing about who was inside. |
| Extreme heat or cold | Confirm the failure. Check the most exposed units and top floors. | Mechanical contractor, on call manager, the city warming center line. | Work the assistance list door by door. Open a heated or cooled common room. | What failed, when it returns, the nearest public center, signs of heat illness. |
| Gas odor | No light switches. No phones. No elevators. Leave, then call from outside. | 911 and the gas utility, both from outdoors. | Clear the affected floors, meet responders outside, attempt no untrained shutoff. | Leave now, do not knock or ring bells, do not return until cleared. |
| Medical emergency in a common area | Call 911. Send someone to the street entrance. First aid or AED only if trained. | 911, then the on call manager. | Hold an elevator, meet the ambulance, guide the crew to the exact spot. FDNY asks residents to request precisely this. | Keep the corridor clear. No name, no unit, no medical detail announced. |
| Security incident | Call 911. Run, hide, or fight only as a last resort. | 911 first, then the on call manager, then the board. | Do not confront. Lock the lobby and amenity rooms if safe. Preserve footage. | One short factual message and when the next update comes. CISA notes that "Active shooter incidents are often unpredictable and evolve quickly". |
How do you keep the contact tree current?
Tie every entry to something that already happens on a schedule, because a list nobody is forced to touch goes stale within a year. The tree is short: management office, after hours emergency number, backup manager, front desk, superintendent, 911, the gas and electric and water emergency lines, the elevator and restoration contractors, the broker, and the board.
- Verify the tree quarterly by calling each number, and again within a week of any vendor change, staff departure, or board election.
- Keep printed copies in the binder and the front desk drawer. A tree you cannot reach during an outage is not a tree.
- Collect resident emergency contacts at move in and reconfirm yearly with the unit file.
The vulnerable resident list, and the privacy problem it creates
You need the list and you are not entitled to what goes on it, and that tension never resolves cleanly. Firefighters want to know which units hold someone who cannot take the stairs. Residents have every right to decline being catalogued by disability in a file a rotating cast of staff can open.
The workable version is voluntary, with a plain explanation of its purpose. It is narrow: does this person need help leaving, what kind, who is their helper. No diagnosis. It is access controlled, held by named roles, with a written rule for handing it to the fire department. It is refreshed annually. And it is backed by a plan, not just a list, because a name on a page rescues nobody.
The CDC's advice to residents is the right content for that plan: list the people who support you, and work out how you will reach them "if the power is out or if phones do not work". Someone using a power wheelchair should keep a lightweight manual chair as backup, because in a fire the elevator is gone. Assign a helper and a backup helper for every name.
How do you reach every resident when the power is out and the app is unreachable?
Layer the channels and assume the top two will fail. The US Energy Information Administration reported that American electricity customers averaged about five and a half hours of interruption across roughly 1.4 events in 2022.
- Fire alarm and voice system. Fastest, least informative.
- Push, in app, and email. Instant for anyone holding a phone.
- SMS. Survives a dead app and a weak signal.
- Automated voice calls. The only channel reaching residents without smartphones, which is why buildings with older residents never skip it.
- Lobby screens and printed notices. Paper is the only layer that works with no power and no network. Write it in advance.
- Door knocking. Slow, and the only method with a confirmed receipt. Reserve it for the assistance list and evacuation orders.
Enrollment is the quiet failure point. The 2024 National Preparedness Report, citing FEMA's 2023 National Household Survey, found that "only 36 percent of respondents reported signing up for alerts and warnings", while 51 percent believed they were prepared. Check coverage by channel twice a year. If your building speaks several languages, the template must exist in all of them beforehand, which pairs with everyday resident communication.
What does a useful annual drill look like?
A useful drill has a stopwatch, an observer with a clipboard, and one thing broken on purpose: the on call manager does not answer, or the main stair is blocked. Frequency comes from your local fire code and occupancy class, not a national rule. The West Metro guide lists four drills annually for all occupants in Group R-2, which covers apartments and dorms. That is one jurisdiction's application, not universal law.
- Time everything. Alarm to first staff action, action to first notification, notification to full assembly.
- Run a staff tabletop separately. One incident, one hour, everyone at a table. It finds more gaps than any evacuation.
- Record it. Date, who ran it, notification method, staff on duty, occupants who moved, total time.
- Check the supply closet the same day. Ready.gov's baseline for what residents hold themselves is "one gallon per person per day for several days".
- Give residents the household half. The US Fire Administration tells households to "Find 2 ways out of every room" and pick an outside meeting place. Lorraine Carli, NFPA vice president of outreach and advocacy, told the Defense Logistics Agency that in a home fire "you may have as little as one to two minutes to escape safely".
The after action review
Hold it within a week, while people still remember the order things happened in. One hour with the staff who were there, answering five questions: what happened and when, what the plan said should happen, where the two diverged, what changes, and who owns each change by when. Keep an incident log from minute one, with times rather than impressions, and photograph everything before cleanup, because the insurance file and the review draw on the same evidence. Anything that exposed a maintenance failure belongs in next year's maintenance plan.
Where software helps, and where it does not
Software moves messages. It does not make decisions, and it is no substitute for calling 911 or for staff who know the plan by heart. Any building can run everything above with a binder, a phone, and printed notices.
What a platform changes is the notification layer. URBI sends one announcement across push, in app, email, SMS, and voice, targeted to specific units or access levels, so it reaches residents who never open the app. URBI Display, the lobby and elevator screen system, has a property wide emergency takeover that flips every screen to the alert. Arthur, the resident, family, and tenant facing AI, takes the calls and messages that follow, so staff are not explaining the same outage forty times while needed in a stairwell. Arthur proposes and people approve. It does not act on its own, it is not an emergency service, and URBI makes no life safety certification claim.
Frequently asked questions
How often does a building emergency preparedness plan need to be reviewed?
Annually at minimum, and immediately after any incident, staff change, or renovation that alters exits or utilities. The West Metro Fire Rescue guide, built on the International Fire Code, requires apartment plans to be reviewed annually or whenever staff assignments, occupancy, or the building itself change. Local code may demand more.
Should residents evacuate or shelter in place during a fire?
It depends on the building, which is why the answer must be written down in advance. FDNY's apartment guide distinguishes the two, and instructions differ for combustible and non combustible construction. In many towers it is safer to stay in an unaffected unit while the fire department works. Get your answer from your fire department.
Do we need a written plan in a small building?
Yes, and it will be shorter. A small building fits the whole plan on four pages: contacts, the eight incidents, the assistance list, and the notification order. Small self managed buildings carry the same duty of care as professionally managed ones.
Write the plan this quarter, drill it next quarter, and review it yearly. That is the whole discipline. If you want the notification layer handled by something that reaches every resident on every channel at once, email hello@myurbi.co. Your after hours emergency line stays exactly what it was.
