16.4 Facility Emergencies

A facility emergency is any event that takes away temperature control, potable water, wastewater removal, or a clean environment. The Food Code name for the worst of these is an imminent health hazard: a situation that demands immediate correction or cessation of operation to prevent foodborne illness. Power outage, water interruption, sewage backup, fire, and flood are the five stems the exam recycles. The decision is the same every time: Can you still hold TCS food at 41°F or 135°F, and can you still wash hands, wash ware, and keep sewage and dirty water off food? If the answer is no, stop service and notify the regulatory authority (RA).

The Decision: Control TCS Temperatures and Sanitation — or Stop

Stay open only while both are true:

• TCS temperature control — cold food at 41°F or below, hot food at 135°F or above, or a documented time-as-control procedure you can still finish legally.
• Sanitation — potable water for hands and warewashing, functioning toilets and wastewater, and no sewage, floodwater, smoke chemical, or dirty ceiling water touching food or food-contact surfaces.

When either fails and you cannot restore it immediately, cease operation. Notify the RA. Do not invent a “we will just do sandwiches” workaround if you have no water to wash hands or a sewage film on the floor.

Power Outage

Without electricity, walk-ins, reach-ins, make tables, and hot-holding wells are just insulated boxes. Keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed. Every opening dumps the cold you still have. Monitor time and, when you must open a unit, probe food temperatures — not the air thermometer on the broken box.

• TCS food that stays at 41°F or below can continue.
• TCS food that rises into the temperature danger zone (TDZ, 41°F–135°F) is on the clock you already learned in holding chapters. If time in the TDZ is unknown or too long, discard. A later reheat does not launder that history.
• Hot-held TCS that falls below 135°F follows the same time rules; you cannot “catch it up” on a sterno that never brings it back legally.

If you cannot keep TCS safe, stop service. Frozen food that remained solid or still shows ice crystals is often salvageable; food that thawed into the TDZ for too long is not.

Water Interruption

No potable water means no legal handwashing, no warewashing, no produce wash, and often no toilets. Bottled water and single-use articles can sometimes bridge a short, approved interruption if the RA agrees and if wastewater still leaves the building. That is a conversation with the RA, not a PIC solo decision to stay open all weekend.

Ice melt from a storm is not potable unless it comes from an approved source. Parking-lot ice, roof ice, and a bag that sat in floodwater are not drinking water, not a cooling medium that contacts food, and not a guest beverage.

Sewage, Fire, and Flood

Sewage backing up is the 16.2 imminent hazard again: cease operation. Discard food and single-use items the sewage touched. Equipment that sewage reached must be cleaned and sanitized after the plumbing is restored — and you still need the RA before you plate the next ticket.

Fire adds heat, smoke, and fire-suppression chemicals. Food that was exposed to smoke residue, ceiling water from sprinklers, or chemical dust is contaminated. Sealed hard goods in undamaged packaging might be salvageable after cleaning the container; open food, porous packaging, and anything the chemicals touched are gone.

Flood water is not clean water. Discard food the flood touched, including cases that wicked water through cardboard. Walls, floors, and equipment need a sanitation reset, not a squeegee and a dinner seating.

Ceiling water — a roof leak, a burst apartment line, or sprinkler discharge — is treated as contamination when it contacts food, food-contact surfaces, or linens. Discard the food. Clean and sanitize the surfaces. Find the leak.

What to Discard

When in doubt, discard. The Food Code does not award points for saving a case of lettuce that sat in a puddle.

Reopening

After an imminent health hazard, reopening requires regulatory-authority approval. Dry floors and a working light switch are not a permit to serve. The RA will want evidence that water is potable, wastewater leaves, TCS equipment holds temperature, contaminated food is gone, and surfaces are clean and sanitized. Call before you post “business as usual.”

Scenario: Thursday Thunderstorm

Lightning kills power at 4:40 p.m. The PIC tapes the walk-in shut, writes the time on a board, and probes chicken salad only when a ticket forces a door opening. At 6:15 the salad is 43°F and the make table is 51°F. City water is still on, but the dish machine and hot wells are dead. The PIC stops hot-line service, discards TCS from the make table whose time above 41°F cannot be defended, holds the walk-in product that is still at 41°F or below, and calls the RA when it is clear the outage will last. A cook suggests filling guest cups with ice scooped from a drift against the dock. That ice is not an approved source. The exam will also offer “reopen at dawn if the lights come back.” If the event was an imminent hazard — or if sewage or flood joined the storm — wait for the RA.

Exam Traps

• Opening every cooler “to check” and dumping the remaining cold.
• Serving TCS that sat in the TDZ because it “still smells fine.”
• Using storm ice or roof melt as drinking or food-contact water.
• Washing flood- or sewage-touched produce and selling it.
• Reopening after sewage, fire, or flood because the staff mopped, without RA approval.
• Staying open with no potable water because the menu was simplified.