Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and Account Executive in the Landscape Group Greg Garcia discuss heat illness prevention.

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Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence

Transcript

Alyssa Burley: Hi, this is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa's Media Communications and Client Services Department. Thank you for listening to today's Top Rancho Mesa News, brought to you by our Safety and Risk Management Network, StudioOne. Welcome back everyone. My guest is Greg Garcia, Account Executive in the Landscape Group with Rancho Mesa. He specializes in commercial insurance for the lawn and landscape industry. Today we're going to talk about heat illness prevention. Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg Garcia: Hey Alyssa, thanks for having me. Always good to be here in StudioOne.

AB: Of course. So as we get into spring and the weather starts to warm up, it's a great time for employers to take a look at their current Heat Illness Prevention Plan or HIPP, as well as make sure all crew members are up to date on their heat illness training. Greg, what are a couple of things employers should remember when they're looking at their heat illness prevention plan?

GG: Yeah, now this is the topic that kind of seems maybe a little bit strange to be talking about right now with all the rain California has been getting. I think it's supposed to be like 50 degrees this weekend, so kind of seems a little bit different to be talking about it.

AB: Yeah.

GG: But we know those hot months are coming and I was actually just up in Sacramento about 10 days ago and Berkshire Hathaway, who's a great carrier partner of ours, was actually kind enough to let us use their office space and actually volunteered a couple of their loss control specialists, Peter and Adam, to basically go over a heat illness workshop and talk about HIPP and when this workshop started the first three things they said was water rest and shade.

AB: I like that.

GG: Yeah so it hit you right in the face right away so that's that's one of the most important things to any HIPP plan and that would be, you know, adequate water for all crew members, access to the water, regular rest periods going on throughout the day, and then finally with the shade, identifying, you know, proper shade for those rest periods. And a couple things that was interesting with that was because there was about 10 other landscape professionals at this workshop, and they were talking about how shade can often change throughout the day with the changing of the sun, right?

AB: Yeah.

GG: So if you got to a job site at 8 a .m. that shady spot might be different at 12 p .m. or whatever it might be. So you got to continue to change and adapt to that. A lot of companies were also bringing maybe easy ups to their job sites in order to create the adequate shade for their crew members. This is a really important topic though. I know the hot months aren't here yet, but rising temperatures year after year, there are some staggering statistics that they brought up in this. Basically, heat illness is almost accounting for more trauma than like tornadoes and hurricanes and things like that.

AB: Wow!

GG: It's just becoming more and more prevalent and especially for us focusing on the landscape industry, it kind of goes hand-in-hand. So making sure you have an HIPP in place and that it's compliant and everybody's safe is super super important.

AB: Absolutely. So what kind of information needs to be in the HIPP in order to be compliant and this may be different from state to state?

GG: Yeah, state to state it definitely varies. The one we were talking about you know here in California it absolutely needs to be written in English. That's first and foremost. And then it also needs to be available in any other languages that are used at the company. And then finally, kind of really important, it needs to be available at all job sites at all times. And then within this HIPP, there's a few things that should be laid out. One would be, you know, procedures for supplying and accessing water, high heat procedures, emergency response procedures, and bear with me on the word, all right? I don't think anybody can say acclimatization.

AB: Acclimatization.

GG: Okay, I'm just gonna let you go. And I only know that because we hear it every single year in the heat illness prevention workshop. I hear it all the time. I heard it 10 times at this workshop. I can't do it.

AB: So it's tough.

GG: What you said, Alyssa, you know, we need those procedures and methods in there as well. Also important to note that that's not the only thing that makes you compliant. Yeah it's the written stuff down and it's nice and you can kind of check a box but more importantly you need to make sure you're empowering your crew members and your leaders of your organization to take a look and really will look after each other and look for signs of heat stress and when I was at the workshop they were talking about there's some moderate signs maybe heavy breathing or maybe a little bit of heat rash you start to see that something needs to happen to more severe signs like somebody just actually fainting on a job site so crew members need to really kind of have the buddy system where they're looking after one another and making sure everybody's safe and that goes in regards to taking the proper rest right there's some crew members that might be pretty prideful and have been doing it for a long time and say “I don't need this break I'm good like I just want to finish my job,” kind of the blue collar mentality. But it's really important that kind of all crew members are pulling the same rope and saying, "Hey, I know, but we need to take this rest. It's extremely hot out here today." And most importantly, what all of our clients want is for all their employees to go home safe. So it's important to have it written down, but it's also important to make sure you're empowering your employees to implement some of these procedures moving forward.

AB: Yeah and you know we see this a lot where you know a client will have a plan written down but it's not enough just to have it written down you actually have to implement it. It has to be something that everybody knows about and actually follows on a regular basis.

GG: Absolutely.

AB: And so Rancho Mesa clients can train their employees on heat stress and heat illness prevention with both online courses in English and in Spanish and a variety of toolbox talks in the SafetyOne website and mobile app. And clients can distribute their HIPP through the mobile app, ensuring foreman and crews have access to the document along with any other related resources that they'll need at the job site. And I know Cal/OSHA and I'm sure other OSHA organizations have a lot of resources, you know, little pocket guides and all kinds of things that you can make available through the mobile app. Plus, every year, Rancho Mesa hosts heat illness prevention workshops, just like you mentioned, to assist in educating our clients and their employees. And we're actually hosting a live workshop here in San Diego in June, but we also have a recorded version that's accessible on our website. So if anybody needs that, you can go ahead and sign up for that and you don't have to be a Rancho Mesa client to sign up for that webinar. So great if listeners have questions about managing their risk. What's the best way to get in touch with you?

GG: Yeah, I can be reached at ggarcia@ranchomesa.com or at 619-438-6905. And yeah, just to kind of reiterate, really looking forward to that workshop that we have going on in June. We always fill the room. Alyssa, you and your team do a great job getting that message out to our clients and other people around the county. And yeah, any questions on anything like that, please don't hesitate to reach out.

AB: Absolutely. Well, Greg, thank you so much for joining me in StudioOne.

GG: Thanks Alyssa.

AB: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne. For more information, visit us at RanchoMesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.