Preparedness - Introduction

Preparedness - Introduction

Don Hodge for 4^thTriage
In collaboration with Will Stewart

10/14/2010 10:41 a10/p10

Your greatest stress reliever in a disaster is an organized pre-packed Disaster Kit that you can throw in a vehicle and be on the road in 15 minutes - if you MUST evacuate. You need to understand IF you need to evacuate or if you should STAY at home. Each option comes with its own challenges and advantages. In an evacuation stress is really high on top of everything else and you can only take about 3 days of food, water, and supplies with you. If you can safely stay at home stress levels are greatly reduced because of the familiar surroundings and the many little things that calm and comfort you - items that you can’t take with you when you evacuate. At home you can build up a stockpile of food, water and the thousand other things that make life comfortable bit by bit that could last you months.

So what is a disaster? A hurricane like Katrina? But I live in Nebraska where we don’t have hurricanes.


To you, anything that happens to threaten your home, family, or livelihood is a “disaster” - even if it doesn’t meet anyone else’s definition. These can be natural events, quarantines, crumbling infrastructure like bridges and dams, terrorist activities, getting laid-off, or being injured so you can’t work for a few months.


We’ve been learning lately that “Change Happens”. And it can happen right where you are. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) has never been true.


There are natural disasters that have been common to your area or region for the last 50 years, but the climate is changing! Ice cores, tree rings, and geology show that it has gone sometimes from one extreme to another in as little as a decade or two. You can’t assume what has happened in the past will be set in concrete for the future. Southern California was a hurricane coast in 1810. New York City got hammered in 1893 and 1938 by hurricanes. Indications are that Boston and the whole East Coast have been hit repeatedly over the last 400 years by massive hurricanes.


Also you shouldn’t ignore man-made structures as potential disasters in your area. The majority of our bridges are decades old – many way over 50 years - and need to be checked. Think Minneapolis-St. Paul. What about dams in your area? Do you live downstream from a dam? When were they built – 50 years ago, 70 years ago, 100 years ago, more? If your upstream dam broke, how long would you have to get to high ground? If you live in an earthquake area, buildings may be a terrible danger to be around. Buildings may collapse if built of masonry without concrete containing rebar to strengthen it OR if built upon landfill areas.

Look, you don’t want to approach things with fear and panic. That never solved anything. What you DO need to do is to be aware of what is going on around you. You need to analyze and assess your environment and situation. Problems can be solved - assuming you don’t wait too long to think about them.

Prior preparation will minimize the damage you suffer. You will make better decisions if you are not under stress in the middle of a crisis. A great stress reliever is having months of meals on hand; something that can be built up a little at a time. Great ideas of what can be done to combat a crisis often fail because you don’t have some simple item around that you could have picked up last week – if you had thought of it. If you wait until that last minute and haven’t done any preparation ahead of time, your options are very limited. Now is the time to research any questions or collect a few items. These basic principles will help you do that.

1. Find out what types of disasters could happen to your neighborhood. Don’t forget man-made ones. You won’t think of all possibilities, but all disasters have a common core set of problems that need to be addressed.
2. Plan for the worst and you should have everything else covered. Indeed many of the things done to prepare for that “mother-of-all-disasters” will remove daily stress, save you money, and help you to live greener.
   
3. Find out several ways to solve each core set of problems. One of the biggest dangers to you in a disaster is not knowing what to do. Time may be critical!
4. Decide what conditions will require you to do what actions.
5. Transform those decisions into a written plan and review it with all family members. You can also develop a plan with your neighbors.
6. Be alert and informed of what is happening around you. We are fortunate that our weather forecasting and tracking is so good. It keeps us up to date for that last minute warning.
7. When those conditions for what you planned occur, act immediately.
8. If you try to change your basic plan in the middle of a crisis, you will usually replace good decisions with bad ones. You will forget something and “Murphy’s Law” is ever present – always at the worst time.