Workplace safety concerns have made panic rooms in office buildings less of a luxury and more of a strategic necessity, according to Geno Roefaro, CEO of Saferwatch.
SaferWatch is a safety and emergency alert platform that enables real-time communication, tip reporting and panic alerting to help individuals and corporations.
Roefaro said the company is already consulting on the build-out of these rooms for a dozen companies, many of which have reached out less than a week after a gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, entered the lobby of 345 Park Avenue and went on a shooting rampage with an AR-15 style rifle that left four dead.
Some employees in the building, which houses global investment powerhouse Blackstone, real estate firm Rudin Management, the National Football League and global professional services firm KPMG, sought refuge in these rooms while chaos ensured, while others took shelter in bathrooms or barricaded themselves in offices.
However, one victim, 27-year-old Julia Hyman, was shot and killed after stepping out of a panic room inside Rudin Management’s Midtown office. Rudin owns the property.
Roefaro described these rooms as “a critical layer of protection during active threats” that allow employees to flee to shelter safely while first responders are alerted in real time.
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While they are expensive to build, costing roughly $150,000 to $500,000 for a fully secure room, Roefaro said, he argued that it is pivotal in protecting employees and executives from outside threats.
Samuel Fish, founder of Shield Security Doors Ltd, said that companies have traditionally installed panic rooms and safe rooms in their offices for C-suite executives, which commonly involved reinforcing the walls, floor and ceiling with bullet-resistant materials such as fiberglass and installing forced entry and bullet-resistant doors and windows.
“The reason this was mainly tailored to the senior executives is because these individuals were the most likely targets for disgruntled current or former employees, or outside individuals seeking retribution against a corporation,” Fish said.
Still, he argued that the landscape has changed in the last 20 years “as workplace shootings have become increasingly random, and the agendas of the perpetrators increasingly disconnected from reality.”
Monday’s incident, particularly the photo that surfaced showing employees barricading themselves with office furniture, “sparked a lot of people saying, well, how else can we protect our own employees? Like, where can they go? What can we do for them?” Roefaro said.
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There’s a wide range of panic room options that employees can currently find in office settings, from basic safe spaces that allow employees to take refuge behind bulletproof doors and out of a shooter’s direct line of sight, to fully secure and concealed rooms equipped with reinforced glass, according to Roefaro.
These high-end rooms often require advanced communication systems that enable instant, two-way communication with law enforcement. That’s where Roefaro’s company comes in: businesses with such rooms can integrate SaferWatch’s panic alert systems, which provide real-time alerts and help activate a coordinated emergency response.
Over the past few decades, Fish said, an increasing number of companies have started to build office panic rooms in dual-purpose spaces such as conference rooms, break rooms, and bathrooms, as companies began to realize that “janitors and CEOs are often equally at risk in workplace shootings.”
However, Roefaro argued that employee safety goes far beyond simply creating a physical safe space. Employers must ensure that staff receive timely alerts and clearly understand the proper lockdown procedures in the event of an emergency.
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