Preparedness requires a plan. The Red Cross suggests putting together a plan of action for yourself and your family before doing anything else. Depending on the hazards in your area, your plan might vary a little, but the basics will always be the same. The goal of a plan is to do four things: keep you and your family fed, hydrated, safe, and sanitary.
The first order of action is to sit down with your family, if you have one, and make a disaster checklist. This list will include:
•What you need at home
•What you will do in the event of …
•How you will communicate and get news
•Where you will go if you need to leave
•What you will take
•What you will do about pets if you have them
•If you know your neighbors, get together and form a similar plan for the community
After a checklist is made, figure out how the family will communicate with each other if separated. Will there be a community meeting place chosen that everyone can attempt to get to? Will everyone try to get back home? Will you use cell phones, and if service is down, how might you get the information you need?
It is absolutely critical to make sure the identification you carry in your wallet or purse is up to date, including your current address. Pick an out-of-town relative who can be a contact person for the whole family. Did you know that after a disaster it is actually easier to make long-distance calls than local calls? Often, because disasters are regional or local, closer-to-home activity is more clogged or shut down to allow for emergency communications only.
One of the best ways to keep abreast of what is happening is to have a ham radio, but few people take the time to consider this or take the training. More on that in a bit.
Do you have a car you will need to get out of a garage? If the power is off, do you know how to open the garage door manually? If left on foot, where will you walk to get help? In some emergencies, such as an electromagnetic pulse, cars will be useless. Know where you will walk, and maybe get your neighbors involved to walk as a group to a designated shelter if needed.
If there is a home fire, do you know what to do and how to get out safely? Do you have the proper tools around the house, such as a fire extinguisher? In the coming chapters, we will go through everything that should be in your survival kit to meet any kind of emergency, big or small.
All of these questions must be answered to have a solid action plan. Remember, situational awareness! Take a look at your location and find the best escape/evacuation routes out of your home/office. Know what roads lead in and out of your community, and notice which ones tend to get bogged down the most with traffic. In some rural areas, there may be only one main road out, so look for alternative ways to get away fast, especially in the case of wildfire.
Make sure everyone in your home knows how to shut off the gas, water, and electricity if needed and who to contact afterwards to get them restored. If you turn off your gas, it will require a professional to turn it back on. Have this information written down in a place where everyone can see it, or put it in your written action plan.
Make sure you have a plan for evacuating your furry friends during an emergency, as well as a place in mind where they can be kept until things return to normal.
What about pets? Your action plan checklist should include what to do with pets in terms of sheltering in place or evacuation. You will not be able to quickly leave animals at a local shelter in the event of an emergency. They will be overwhelmed taking care of the animals they already have!
What about an elderly or disabled family member? Will you need to have a wheelchair or walker ready should you have to leave? What about oxygen tanks and other home medical equipment that you may not be able to move? How can you improvise if asked to leave immediately or if the power goes off? Do you need to think about a small power generator?
Family Matters
Planning for a disaster when you have a family can come down to simple things, but most of us don’t take the time to address even those. Start now to put the following into place so that everyone knows what to do when disaster strikes:
•Emergency Contact Information: Every family member must know who the outside contact person is and how to contact them. Keep this name and phone number in a wallet as well as in the contacts on your cell phone. Make sure every family member has this information on hand. Don’t just put it into your phone, because you may lose or forget your phone without having memorized the information.
•Emergency Meeting Place: Hopefully, you will all be together when disaster strikes, but in case you’re not, have a particular place your family members can meet, preferably the designated emergency shelter closest to home. For kids who may be at school, have a family member assigned to pick up the kids and get them to the meeting place.
•Emergency Supplies: Make sure every family member knows where the supply kits are and what is in them. Go over how to use items such as tools, manual can openers, and shelter-in-place sheeting and tape.
Emergency Resources: Does each family member know how to dial 911? Does everyone have the same apps on their cell phones for communication and shelter location purposes? Do family members know where the closest hospital is? Fire station? Police station?
In a September 2017 article for the Daily Independent called “When Natural—or Any—Disaster Strikes, Being Prepared Matters,” Jack Barnwell interviewed Georgianna Armstrong, the manager of Kern County (California) Emergency Services. She stated that a family communication plan was one of the basic recommended actions and that writing the contact information down is essential. Our dependency on cell phones can often make us forget that we no longer have phone numbers of important people memorized. Smaller children should know where the contact information sheet is in the home.
Armstrong’s main point of urging people to have a family plan revolves around the possibility that emergency services will be crippled during a major disaster. “In a very big event, resources are going to come pouring in from other areas, but that takes time. The more strength and resilience you have to take care of yourself in the immediate after-effect of an event, the better prepared you are to withstand that event.”
If preparing for an emergency comes down to one basic thing, it is this, in Armstrong’s words: ”We are all our first line of defense.”
Most people know all about having extra food and water around the house, but few think about how important it is to have critical documents such as birth and marriage certificates, social security cards, passports, deeds, insurance information, and mortgage information all in a safe place, preferably a small fireproof safe that can be easily grabbed if you have to evacuate quickly. Do this before an emergency happens, because you won’t have time to search through records when it does.
SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
When making plans for those living in an assisted living facility, check with facility management or the resident council for a copy of the evacuation plans, meeting places within the facility, and who will assist residents in sheltering in place. These facilities should have supplies on hand for residents.
Home caregivers should also know of your emergency plans and know where supplies and important items are in the house in case they happen to be alone with a family member at the time of an emergency. If a family member requires a constant power source for a medical device, make sure everyone, caregivers included, know of the contingency plan if the power goes out, including how to find and turn on the generator.
If a family member is bed-bound, evacuation can be tricky, so be sure to have their medical supplies in case you must shelter in place. Ideally, there will be someone to help get them into an emergency vehicle or a family automobile that is equipped to handle them. Check into an emergency transport cot that can be kept with your supplies.
Know where the nearest hospitals are for anyone who must receive care as soon as possible when no ambulance service is running. Be prepared for hospitals to be overrun with people seeking aid. There also may be a shelter set up that can provide medical support in the interim.
Now that you have a written plan or checklist that covers these key points, the next big step is to get the things you need in the form of emergency survival kits. Don’t just assume the things you have around the house now will suffice or that you can ask your neighbors if you run out of food or water. They may not have made any plans either.
Notice the word “kits,” because the truth is, you will want to have emergency supplies for your home, your cars, and your workplace if you spend a great deal of time there.