Lab crises may arrive as a phone call during off-hours, a system alert that fails to trigger, a freezer alarm that no one receives, or a decision that must be made before all the facts are known. In this context, a “lab crisis” is not limited to catastrophic accidents. It includes any event that puts staff safety at risk or significantly disrupts regulated laboratory operations.
These events span a wide range of scenarios, including chemical or biological exposures, fires and explosions, equipment failures affecting critical experiments or storage, power or HVAC outages, water intrusion, data system failures, cyber incidents, supply chain breakdowns, and regulatory shutdowns. While the scenarios differ, the underlying challenge remains the same: how prepared is the lab to respond when standard safeguards break down?
Why universal lab crisis preparation matters
Laboratories face risks that most workplaces do not. Extensive safety training, regulatory oversight, and compliance frameworks exist to address these hazards and reduce the likelihood of harm. Yet even well-run labs often prepare for specific risks in isolation, leaving gaps when multiple systems fail at once or when staff must adapt outside familiar procedures.
Tracy Durnan, disaster preparedness expert and research operations manager at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, emphasizes that crisis readiness is inseparable from daily operations. “You can’t be prepared for a crisis when something goes wrong if you aren’t prepared for a crisis on a typical day; the two are inextricably linked. The time to prepare for a crisis is now.” Preparedness, in practice, determines whether labs can preserve samples, data, and staff capacity when resources tighten, and decisions must be prioritized.
Building resilience before anything happens
Risk mapping beyond the obvious
Most labs can list their hazards, but fewer can clearly identify where failures would cascade. Effective crisis preparation requires stress-testing assumptions and mapping single points of failure across people, equipment, data, vendors, and utilities.
Jason Nagy, PhD, MLS (ASCP), lab safety support coordinator for Sentara Health, advises starting at the earliest stage of a potential breakdown. “Managers should begin by looking at the point of failure or at ground zero of a crisis… Essentially, you are working backwards. Look at what could go wrong and create a plan to mitigate those failures.” That approach forces labs to move beyond regulatory checklists and confront operational fragility—what breaks first versus what breaks worst.
This process often reveals uncomfortable gaps. Nagy notes that many labs discover during emergencies that staff lack confidence in how to respond. “The biggest shock that managers uncover is that staff do not know how to properly respond in a crisis or emergency event.” Reading an SOP during onboarding does not prepare staff to act under pressure; repeated review, drills, and scenario-based training do.
Cross-training and succession planning
Lab crises expose knowledge silos. When only a handful of people know how to manage spill response, system downtime, or shutdown procedures, those individuals become overwhelmed, while others hesitate.
Nagy has seen how this imbalance leads to burnout. “When only a few staff respond to a spill or step up during system downtime, they will eventually feel that fatigue.” Cross-training distributes responsibility, reduces panic, and ensures that more staff can contribute meaningfully during an incident. Clear role assignment and backup coverage also prevent delays caused by absenteeism or turnover.
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Equipment and infrastructure readiness
Checklists confirm that systems exist. They do not confirm that systems perform when needed. Alarm monitoring, backup power, emergency ventilation, and other critical controls must be tested under realistic conditions, with attention to response time and notification accuracy.
Durnan highlights a recurring failure point: “The most glaring oversight I have seen, even in labs that are otherwise very well-prepared for a crisis, is the lack of critical equipment alarm testing. I have seen too many freezers full of samples go down on a weekend, with all samples inside completely thawed by Monday morning when the lab staff arrived, because the lab managers were not regularly testing their critical equipment alarm monitoring systems,” shares Durnan. “When a crisis hits, the system either calls outdated phone numbers or, even worse, the system fails to call anyone at all due to a technical glitch, and the lab remains unaware of the problem until it is too late.” Regular testing ensures alerts reach the right people before losses compound.
Emergency inventory management
Crisis response depends on access to the right supplies at the right time. Labs should maintain minimum reserves of PPE, spill kits, and critical reagents, store them in clearly marked locations, and pre-identify alternative suppliers.
Durnan’s experience during a building flood underscores the stakes. When flooding disabled elevators and cut off access to liquid nitrogen deliveries, labs storing samples on upper floors faced immediate loss. “I always kept a full backup liquid nitrogen supply tank on hand in case of a crisis. Because I had this backup, I was able to keep our precious samples alive.” Labs without redundancy lost samples that “could never be recreated.”
Lab crisis communication and decision-making
Technical controls fail without coordinated leadership. During a crisis, uncertainty is unavoidable, but confusion is not.
Clear command structure
Labs need predefined clarity around who makes operational, safety, and communication decisions. At Sentara Health, Nagy describes activating an incident command center to coordinate response across teams. “We set up an incident command center when an emergency or crisis impacts one of our labs… What makes these command center meetings so successful is that everyone on the call helps navigate the challenges.”
These discussions include couriers, receiving labs, processing teams, and leadership, allowing complex decisions—such as rerouting specimens—to happen quickly and safely.
Communication channels
Clear communication reduces anxiety. “This anxiety comes from not being sure of what to do or the fear of messing up,” Nagy explains, particularly when staff must rely on unfamiliar downtime procedures. Labs should define primary communication channels and ensure staff know where to receive instructions when systems fail.
Decision-making with uncertainty
Labs cannot plan for every scenario, but they can prepare to adapt. “You have to have a Plan B, a Plan C, and sometimes a Plan D,” Nagy says. Even straightforward solutions, such as sending samples to another lab, require coordination across transport, staffing, and receiving capacity. Practicing these transitions in advance enables faster, safer decisions.
People-first crisis response
Safety systems only work when people feel empowered to act. Under stress, Nagy notes, staff may default to “fight, flight, or freeze.” Training and drills help staff move beyond panic toward a coordinated response.
Extended disruptions add another layer of strain, as a lab crisis often compounds external pressures staff are already carrying. Durnan stresses that leading through these events requires intentional support for staff mental health. “It takes time to develop a work environment of trust where your staff feel comfortable opening up about mental health challenges,” she says. “Creating this atmosphere of trust, in advance of a crisis, will prove valuable at the time of a crisis.” She adds that modeling openness about mistakes and challenges, along with mental health training, helps create an emotionally safe environment where staff can ask for support without fear.
After the lab crisis: recovery and learning
Post-incident reviews should focus on systems, not individuals. Nagy emphasizes iteration: “When you do perform drills, take notes… Changes to the response can be made based on what you recorded during the drill. Now, drill again with your changes.”
Recovery planning should also address broader risks. Durnan urges labs to consider agents that could pose public health concerns if released. “Include a section detailing how and when staff might need to better shield and protect, or even destroy, samples.”
Preparing for the next safety crisis is not about predicting the worst-case scenario. It is about building resilience into everyday operations so labs can protect people, preserve critical work, and recover without compounding harm, no matter how the next disruption unfolds.
