Earthquake and earthquake-related disasters can occur anytime and anywhere. At shipbuilding sites, fire is used and employees are at work in high places. Because of this, earthquakes can cause gas leakage, fires, explosions, or injuries from collapsed buildings or falls from high places. Tsuneishi shipbuilding factory practiced an emergency drill with the Fukuyama Nishi Fire Department's cooperation on March 19th (Wed.). About 70 employees of Tsuneishi Shipubuilding Company participated in the drill, practicing appropriate responses in an emergency situation, assuming that an earthquake of 5+ intensity occurs, leading to worker injuries and fire in the factory.

At the drill, at 9:30 in the morning, a warning was announced to the factory through the factory speaker immediately after an emergency earthquake prompt alert. A countermeasure office was set up to allow prompt action by the information team, warning team, support team, rescue team, guiding team, and accident prevention team under the respective team leaders’ directions at the same time as the self defense fire troop started operations. Staff on each team took prompt action, cooperating with rescue and firefighting crews and successfully extinguishing fires and tending to the injured by 10 o’clock.

After the drill, Fukuyama Nishi Fire Department chief Kazuhide Shibabuki commented “I think all teams were able to take proper measures during today’s drill and achieved the goal of checking respective actions in case of emergency. In an emergency situation, the key to safety is each team's proper action. Please keep clearly in mind that a disaster will occur someday and reinforce your disaster-response skills to protect the lives of yourself and others” to emphasize the importance of drill. At the end of the drill, Tsuneishi factory manager Masahiro Kawakita concluded by saying “How we respond to an emergency situation is based on our factory’s basic 5S slogan. So, we should continuously improve the 5Ss and strengthen our disaster countermeasures system.”

In an actual emergency situation, swift evacuations are needed, along with equipment maintenance, rescue and firefighting. Tsuneishi factory has performed an annual emergency fire drill since 2003 and an earthquake drill since 2008, so that we can take appropriate actions in cases of emergency.

Team leaders report “We’re going into action!” to troop leader at the countermeasure office.	Staffs on respective teams going into action.
The information team collected reports from each site, allowing the countermeasure office to assess conditions in the factory.	Support team checks equipment for damage such as gas leakage in the factory site. The warning team patrols to locate injured workers. An information team member joins each team to report site conditions to the countermeasure office. Recording occurred situations in chronological order.
The guiding team guides rescue teams to save injured workers.	Rescuing a seriously injured worker.
Ambulance and fire trucks arrive.	Passing a seriously injured worker to the rescue crews.
At the fire site, firefighting troops immediately begin fire suppression measures.	Cooperating with firefighting crews.