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The Charlotte Observer headline was: "Fire burns Hartsville fertilizer plant" over a short story with minimum details. But the story of the massive fire at the Agrium fertilizer plant in Hartsville was covered by other news outlets and everyone connected with Hartsville who was also on Facebook.

Good news: despite the huge fire there were no injuries or deaths. Bad news: fifty people no longer have a place to work. Helpful news: you can learn some lessons about critical incidents from this.

"Critical incident" is a term of art in public safety, defined as a "high impact, low frequency" event. Think fertilizer plant fire or hazmat spill or anything else that doesn't happen often but has a huge impact when it does. Critical incidents don't need to involve public safety. If your CEO keels over and dies from a heart attack, that's a critical incident for you.

Let's walk through the fertilizer plant fire and see what we can learn. Here's the first thing: when the plant goes up in flames, it's too late for planning. Everybody has to swing into action to deal with the situation.

That's what they did. Firefighters showed up at the plant and found it "fully involved." They assessed the situation and activated a plan to summon aid from other communities around Hartsville. Since there might be toxic fumes, the EPA was summoned. Because the fire and the fumes might require evacuations, the police department, Red Cross and the school district were brought in.

I'm not familiar with the specific procedures in Hartsville, but I've critiqued enough of these things over the years to be sure that everything I just described to you was planned in advance. No one was standing around on the fire ground muttering, "I wonder who we should call."

The plan wasn't drawn up on the spot, it was put in place a while ago and the kinks were probably worked out with training exercises. That's how it works in public safety and how it can work for you.

Identify possible critical incidents. If you've got a fertilizer plant in town it might blow up, catch fire, or leak hazardous chemicals into the water supply. Your CEO could die. Your sales manager could decamp for a competitor. Your bookkeeper could steal from you. You might be the defendant in a sexual harassment suit. Make a big list.

Figure out how you'll handle every important event. Plan it down to details like who will be called and what their phone numbers and email addresses are.

Turn your plans into checklists. They should have every important step, in order, with any information necessary. Checklists drive out panic.

Do a little training. Play "What if?" with each incident.

Review regularly. Set up a schedule for reviewing the plan and checklist for each critical incident. Revise as needed.

Boss's Bottom Line

Critical incidents will happen. Your job is to identify the likely ones, plan to handle them, and take steps to make sure you can implement the plan if necessary.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.