By Blake Deshazo | The Selma Times-Journal

An emergency can happen at any given time, and Members of the Selma and Dallas County Chamber of Commerce learned Wednesday how they can better prepare their businesses to handle a crisis.

Bob Gareri, a crisis preparedness consultant, spoke to a group of businesses at Wednesday’s “Learn and Lunch” put on by the Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s important that if you’re concerned with safety and your emergency safety plan, then you’ve got to dedicate the time to make sure your plan is operational, that it is tactical and that you’re able to operate during a crisis or the scene of an emergency effectively,” Gareri said.

During his hour-long presentation, Gareri discussed various crisis situations that could occur, such as severe weather, terrorism and an active shooter situation.

“A day doesn’t go by that there is not something in the news dealing with an active shooter or an irate individual or a train wreck, terrorism, or some type of fire or HAZMAT incident,” Gareri said. “Those things are happening all the time, so we have to be ready. We have to have a plan in place.”

David Middlebrooks, who is the human resources manager at Bush Hog, attended the event to help improve the company’s emergency plans.

“It is just something we as a business at Bush Hog are interested in from standpoint of business continuity, and we’ve seen some bad weather through the years and some things that have caused some issues,” Middlebrooks said.

REM4, a digital based emergency plan that can be accessed on cellphones and tablets, was one of the parts of the presentation that stuck out to Middlebrooks.

“It is a software program that has been put together that apparently covers a lot of the situations that before we have had to sit and think about and brainstorm on and try to anticipate things that we didn’t have all the answers for to begin with,” Middlebrooks said. “But being able to work with a system that’s already got it, it may have some promise to it.”

The software is designed to give businesses easy access to their plan without having to depend on a binder filled with hundreds of pages of information.

“So often we have a plan that may be a three-ring binder that is 400 pages long, but when you get into the scene of a crisis it is very difficult to have to [flip] through it and to really be familiar with it,” Gareri said.

While many businesses already have plans in place, Gareri said a plan is useless unless it actively practiced and kept up-to-date.

“I think it is very important once you have a plan that you practice it on a regular basis,” Gareri said. “Anytime you have an incident take a look at your plan and see what type of modifications or fine tuning needs to happen to make sure that any bugs that are in it or cracks or holes in it can be filled to make you more effective the next time around.”