Category: Action Items

How do you keep your team interested and inspired? How do you keep YOURSELF inspired to be prepared, learn more, share more?

Here are three resources that work for us: online webinars, group training, and – a team newsletter or blog!

* Online webinars

Can you take an hour out of this coming week to attend what is sure to be a top-notch webinar aimed at business preparedness? It takes place Thursday, January 23, at 2 p.m., EST. The sponsor is Agility Recovery. I have reviewed their materials, and participated in a couple of their webinars in the past. Excellent, professional, filled with good info. The topic this Thursday: A Look Back at Disasters 2013.

Sign up to attend: http://go.agilityrecovery.com/WBNR2014-01-23Year-In-Review_.html

* Group training

Last week our local CERT graduates were “treated” to an excellent presentation of First Responder safety around downed power lines and gas leaks. The speakers were reps from our local utility companies (Southern California Edison and The Gas Company), and the presentation itself was for professionals and not the often-watered-down stuff you get for “civilians!” We are making changes in the guidelines for our Block Captains.

Need a speaker? Call your local utility. Demand that they send someone knowledgeable, not just the usual PR person!

* Website

Not everybody needs a website, of course. But having a blog, or even a regular e-newsletter, keeps you out there looking for fresh and interesting new information.

Determined to keep your team members on their toes? Start a newsletter! Ask team members to each submit one article, one link, one photo – and you’ll have a great start.

So much of preparedness is simply awareness. You can help keep it top of mind for your team with just a little effort!

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

“Do you smell something funny?”

If you are being exposed to high levels of Carbon Monoxide, enough to kill you in just a few minutes, you won’t smell a thing!

Carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless and tasteless!

I just read the story of a Chicago family that had moved into their new house on Saturday in October. The utilities weren’t going to be turned on until Monday, so they set up a generator in the garage to provide some heating and to run lights.

By Sunday morning they were all dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.

College educated folks. Suburban neighborhood.

How is this possible? They just didn’t know any better!

Given the weather reports lately, with power outages and threatened historic cold weather, be sure you know better. Here are the basics.

What is Carbon Monoxide poisoning?

When you breathe in carbon monoxide, it combines with the hemoglobin in your blood, taking the place of the oxygen that should be there. Breathe in too much, and you will become sick and ultimately die from lack of oxygen.

What are the symptoms?

Very similar to flu, and can come on gradually if you are exposed over a period of time. They include headache, fatigue, nausea, shortness of breath, dizziness.

What produces carbon monoxide?

It’s produced when carbon products – like wood, gas, kerosene, charcoal – are burned but only partially consumed. Most common situation – when someone operates a stove or engine (car, lawn mower, power washer, generator) in an enclosed space like the house or attached garage. (In the Chicago situation, the generator was running in the closed-up garage.) Second most common situation – when a gas heater or gas stove isn’t properly set up, allowing the fuel to escape into the living area without being completely burned.

What’s the real risk in the U.S.?

First Alert quotes the Journal of the American Medical Association as saying that “1,500 people die each year” because of carbon monoxide poisoning. FEMA says that “more than 150 people die” from “non-fire” related carbon monoxide poising each year. Another source mentions “at least 170 deaths as a result of poison from “non-automotive” consumer products. ” Take your pick. One death is too many when they are all preventable.

How can I prevent carbon monoxide poisoning?

1. First, of course, simply be sensible and don’t set up any kind of non-vented engine or temporary gas heater or cooker in the house!
2. Buy and install a carbon monoxide detector – and pay attention to it! Remember, it probably gives off two kinds of “beeps.” One is soft and repetitive, and means that you need to change the batteries. The other is loud and insistent.
3. If the detector goes off, trust it! (Don’t do like one lady did, wait several hours because “I didn’t smell anything!” Odorless, colorless . . . remember?) Take steps to protect your family. Get out into fresh air. Call 911 or the Fire Department.

My friend Russ Flanigan, a BPI Certified contractor in Vermont, adds these recommendations to the basic ones above:

1. Install your detectors intelligently. They can be fooled by humidity, so don’t put them in the kitchen over the sink or dishwasher, or in the bathroom. Put them outside every separate sleeping area.
2. Getting a new kitchen or cookstove? Insist on having it tested for carbon monoxide when it’s installed. (Per Russ, furnaces are routinely tested, stoves not so often.)
3. Own a self-cleaning oven? Be sensible; don’t turn it on and go to bed. Rather, operate the self-cleaning function when you can keep the kitchen well aired.

Action Item: Add carbon monoxide to your “preparedness list.” Buy and install the appropriate number of carbon monoxide alarms.

Click here for a review of the different types, features and costs. 

I think we all can bring up an image of flames shooting out of an apartment or hotel room in a high-rise, with smoke billowing. It’s so that when I travel, I request a room on a lower floor, and near the stairs – all because of those images!

Where are the exits?

The recent fire in West LA got me to look into the realities of emergency preparedness for people living in high-rises, however, and the results weren’t exactly what I was expecting.

Here’s some of what I learned.

The danger of fire in a high-rise is LESS than in other structures!

The National Fire Protection Agency, excellent resource for all things fire-related, reports that only 3% of structural fires are in high-rise buildings. (They define high-rise as 7 stories or taller. There are other definitions; I’m defining high-rise as anything above the height of the local fire department’s highest ladder.)

A fire in a high-rise results in statistically less damage.

Modern hotels and apartment buildings, where about half the high-rise fires occur, are far more likely than other structures to have:

* Construction that resists fire. Steel with spray-on coatings or encased with concrete resists fire far longer than wood construction. If you’re familiar with fire insurance, you know that buildings are rated for how resistive their construction methods are.

* Systems to protect against fire. Depending on size the building, it may have fire alarms and automatic sprinklers. Larger buildings may have camera surveillance, controlled access and even 24-hour monitoring.

OK, that’s great for statistics. But what about me?

If you actually plan to live in a high-rise apartment, what should you find out about the building?

Take a tour of the building with management, and get answers to these five questions:

1. What fire safety systems does the building have, and who maintains them? Don’t assume anything! The LA fire happened in a building with no sprinklers.
2. Are exits clearly marked? In an emergency, elevators won’t be available.
3. Are the fire exits unlocked? Are fire doors kept closed, not propped open?
4. Does the building have a fire evacuation plan? What about fire drills?
5. Does the fire alarm system have a public announcement capability?

And if a fire breaks out, what should you do?

The U.S. Fire Administration, part of FEMA, offers guidelines for how to protect yourself and how to save yourself. Here are highlights:

• Call the fire department yourself to report a fire. Nobody else may have called!
• When you hear a fire alarm, feel the exit door of the apartment with the back of your hand.

a. If it’s cool, open the door carefully. Do you see smoke or flames? If all clear, head for the nearest exit. If you encounter smoke, turn back! According to FEMA, smoke and toxic gases kill more people than flames do.

b. If the door is warm, or you see smoke, do not go out! Stay in your apartment. Stuff the cracks around the door with towels or bedding. Turn off the air conditioning. Keep smoke from coming into the apartment. To quote again from FEMA, “Asphyxiation is the leading cause of fire deaths, exceeding burns by a three-to-one ratio.”

• Call the fire department to let them know where you are. Signal from a window. Don’t leave it open if smoke is coming in.
• Listen for instructions from the fire department.
• Be patient. It may take hours for a high-rise to be fully evacuated.

Do you live now in a high-rise apartment? If not, who do you know that does?

Since nearly 40% of Americans are renters, and the majority of them live in apartments, you are bound to have friends or family in this category.

Action Item:  Please share this information. You can simply forward the blog post, or copy and paste it into an email or onto an attachment or link to it on your own Facebook page.

Thank you.  Your action may save lives.

Virginia Nicols
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

As you can imagine, writing an article or two every week about disaster preparedness requires that I do some research. I don’t already know EVERYTHING! Let me tell you about some of the best sources I’ve found.

First place goes to my neighbors.

I note what they do, and don’t do. Sometimes, I’m impressed, and share the good ideas. Sometimes I’m appalled, and I try to turn that into some sort of lesson, too. “Names have been changed to protect the innocent.”

Second place goes to online forums and websites.

I do try to spend an occasional half-hour on the big “prepper” forums. (Just type into your browser a key word – such as “survivalist” – followed by the word “forum.”) Always interesting, not infrequently overtaken by expressions of fear and hate – not what I’m trying to generate or stoke with my articles. Emergency Plan Guide aims to get neighbors to work together effectively, leveraging their knowledge and equipment for the benefit of all.

Third place goes to my Google Search tools.

I have Google Alerts set for “Emergency Preparedness,” “Survival” and “Disaster Recovery.” Every day I am fed about two dozen articles. Usually, 9 out of 10 are press releases from cities, and they read almost identically. For example: “[City] Holds Emergency Preparedness Fair.” Good news, but ho hum as far as stimulating me to write!

That tenth article is the one I’m looking for! That’s where I get the latest report from the National Fire Protection Association (www.NFPA.org) – this week, their newsletter is about Thanksgiving Cooking Fires. Or I get an expose about the New Jersey city employees who used municipal resources to get generators delivered to their own homes during Hurricane Sandy. (?!) Or, like earlier this week, I found a blogger from Oregon who wrote about using a fire extinguisher as a self-defense device! Thanks for that great idea, Dave. (You can see more from Dave at http://www.disasterprepdave.blogspot.com .)

UPDATE on a source that I was testing.

I had a link on my home page for about a year to current press releases provided by PR Newswire. And while the releases were professional ones, the fact that they focused almost exclusively on health care issues (Ebola, influenza, etc.) made them less valuable for me and my users, who are generally “ordinary citizens” and not health care workers.

So, I’ll keep checking PR Newswire on my own, but I’ve removed the full-page link for now.

So here’s my question for today: what are YOUR sources of information for emergency preparedness ideas? How would you rate them? Let me know by leaving a comment, and I’ll be sure to follow it up with my own research.

Looking forward to your input!

Virginia

Do you have plans for your neighborhood?

Who will get there first? Neighbors!

Certainly, preparing yourself and your household for emergencies is important. But, as we’ve said many times, your single most important link to survival is your immediate neighbors.

Their proximity to you (and yours to them) means that they will be the first people on the scene in a real emergency. The more you and they know about surviving a disaster, the better the chances for everyone.

So, do you have plans underway to form a neighborhood Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)?  And making sure its members are trained, and ready? Encouraging you to do so – and providing help in this regard – is the real purpose of this website.

Organize the neighborhood team.

Here’s what our neighborhood Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) looks like. How does this description compare to yours? We have close to a hundred team members in various stages of training. About a third of our members have received city-sponsored CERT training. There are over 350 homes in our group, divided into six divisions, with six Block Captains under each Division Leader. We have six special teams: First Aid, Communications, Search and Rescue, Operations, Logistics, and Training.

Increasing the Effectiveness of the Team.

We are currently evaluating a number of options to provide our Team Members with advanced training and equipment that increases our capabilities. Among the areas we are focusing on . . .

• Communications – probably the most critical component in our emergency planning
• Standby/Emergency Power – High on all of our members’ lists
• Transportation – Related to communications; different communities have unique needs
• First Aid/Triage – Helping injured people has a protocol
• Temporary Shelter – Caring for neighbors who’ve lost their home in an emergency
• Search and Rescue – Here again, there is a protocol and Pets complicate matters
• Emergency Equipment – Water, food and medicines are individual responsibilities; the neighborhood can invest in more substantial items
• Security — Tricky, but necessary. Training is essential!

The series of posts that accompany this one will discuss each of these eight categories. We will cover the usefulness and the drawbacks of several pieces of equipment as well as the servicing requirements of each. And we’ll discuss ways to finance these purchases.

Our hope is that this information will give you a head start on your team planning.   We’ve chosen to start with the emergency power since that seems to be what most people think is their first consideration.

But first, consider the following Action item:  What constitutes YOUR neighborhood?  If you haven’t really begun neighborhood planning for emergencies, and need to decide on the boundaries for your neighborhood, check out this article:  Who Will Be There To Help?

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 “OMG, I smell gas, don’t you?”

“Must be the result of that earthquake we just felt!  Do we need to turn off the gas?” 

O.K., this is you.

You have determined that yes, there is a real gas leak in a home in your neighborhood. You smell that rotten-egg smell, you hear gas escaping, you even see where the line has broken. You are concerned that gas is accumulating to the point there could be an explosion.

You have moved people a safe distance away and called 911 and/or your system operator, so help is on the way. But that “earth tremor” may have been widely felt and official help may be delayed.

YOU AND YOUR TEAM MEMBERS FEEL YOU CANNOT WAIT.

So you need to turn off the gas. Now what?

If the break is in a line on the home side of the meter, turn off the gas at the meter.

1. Find the meter! If it’s dark, use flashlights, NOT lanterns, matches or candles.  An open flame may set off an explosion if gas has accumulated!

Where’s the turn-off?

2. In this setup, the turn-off valve is in the lower left corner, 6-8 inches above the ground on the standpipe. When you look at it straight on, you can tell the turn-off valve by its distinctive shape: a circular face with a rectangular section sticking out.

3 . Now, how to turn it off? Fingers just won’t work. Search for the gas meter wrench.  Below is a photo of my wrench. Note the rectangular cut-outs.  One cut-out should fit over the rectangular section on the pipe.  (You can also use a 12 inch crescent wrench.) I store my wrench near — but not directly on — the meter.  (According to one of my experts, “Metal attached to, or hanging on, the meter can disrupt the cathodic protection system that helps to prevent underground gas pipes from corroding.”)

Gas wrench has two options.

4. Fit the wrench onto the valve. Turn one-quarter turn. (You may actually need to step on the wrench to get enough leverage to get the thing to turn.)

Open or closed?

5. Confirm that the valve is closed — see the right-hand diagram above.

Should I practice opening and closing the valve?  NO, NO, NO!

DON’T TURN OFF THE GAS unless it’s a real emergency. Why? Because you can’t turn it on again!

“Only gas company field employees are allowed to turn on the gas to the meter.” It’s not just a question of the gas in the line. The gas company will have to go through the house to relight all the pilot lights!

We had a gas main leak in the street outside our community last year.  All the gas to the neighborhood was turned off — 360 homes.  It took the gas company a full day and a half, with a DOZEN EMPLOYEES (all being paid overtime), to get everything turned back on!

Again, you should not practice turning off your gas. You should discourage people from THINKING they should turn off their gas at the least suggestion of a leak.

Remember, step one is to get away from the leak without creating a spark. Step two is to call 911 and the system operator.

But, in a big emergency, you should know how to turn the gas off if there’s a leak.

Share this information with family.

Share it with neighbors, since a gas leak next door could impact you.

Invite your local First Responders and/or your system operator to speak to your group on this topic.

Here’s to safety!

Virginia Nicols
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

Ever happen to you?

Last week we got the notice. “On Tuesday your utility service will be temporarily out of service.”

Clean it up!

We live in a community with a fragile infrastructure. We’ve had electricity outages, burst water mains and even four natural gas leaks over the past few years. (Actually, three of the gas leaks were because of construction, so they weren’t because of the infrastructure. But hey, an outage is an outage, no matter how caused.)

Anyway, this time it was our water service, “Off starting at 8 a.m., until the leak can be found and repaired.”

You realize what happens when there’s no water, right?

No shower or bath, of course. (Easy to do without.)

No flushing the toilet. (Less easy.  It takes GALLONS of water to flush a toilet.)

No rinsing of dirty dishes. (A nuisance only.)

No rinsing hands after picking something up off the floor, or pulling a weed, or wiping up spilled coffee. (Yuck.)

No rinsing the counter after wiping up the spilled coffee. (Sticky!)

You get the picture!

Of course, we were warned, so we were prepared.

It wasn’t even an emergency. Here’s what we did:

• Made sure we had plenty of clean drinking water.
• Filled up the plastic trash cans and set them beside the toilet to allow for flushing.
• Filled up some large pots and pans and set them on the kitchen counter for cooking and rinsing.  (ended up labeling them as “drinkable” or “rinse only”)
• Filled the dishpan with warm water (heated on the stove) and dish soap and put the dirty dishes to soak for the afternoon.
• Opened a couple of packages of handi-wipes and placed them strategically.

I was amazed at the number of times I started to turn on the tap and then had to remember – no water!  But this was a planned event, for a limited time only, so no real problems for us. What would it be like if this went on for a whole 24 hours, or several days?

What sort of water outages have you experienced?

What did you do to plan? What was it like if unplanned? Share your stories in the comment box. We want to hear about it!

How many containers of frozen water would fit in your freezer?

This well-known quote comes from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” written in the mid-1700s by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His poem tells of a ship becalmed whose crew dies of thirst. In a big storm or other emergency, we are not likely to find ourselves in the middle of a salt-water ocean, but we certainly could find ourselves facing serious thirst with only questionable or clearly dirty water available. So once again, I want to address the issue of where to find drinking water. By now you know that you can live for days without food, but not long at all without water.

Here are  four more ideas for where to find water in an emergency:

1. Buy and store water that comes in regular commercial containers. You can buy water in all-sized bottles, cans, and foil packets. Store as much as you can, and refresh regularly. Avoid storing water in plastic directly on cement. According to the LA County Dept. of Public Health, cement can pass through the container into the water.

2. Capture water from alternate sources.

• Your water heater holds 40-80 gallons, and if you have kept it reasonably clean by regularly draining off silt and calcium build-up at the bottom, it can be a life-saver.
• The toilet tank (not the bowl) can be another source of water, it you haven’t used chemicals or colors in it.
• A swimming or decorative garden pool might give you water for washing or even flushing the toilet.  Don’t drink it without treating it first.  (See below, number 4.)

3.  Still more ideas for storing water.

• Freeze water in clean plastic containers and fill in spaces in the freezer, as shown in the photo.  Ice will keep your freezer cooler, save energy – and provide a source of clean water as the freezer defrosts in a power outage. Don’t use plastic that has had milk or meat products in it. And leave space at the top of the container for the water to expand. (I take mine out once in a while and dump the ice in a flower bed, then refresh the water supply.)
• Buy large storage containers that fit the space you have available. If you can put a barrel outside, get a 55-gallon drum with spigot. If you don’t have that option, consider “WaterBricks.” An 8-pack of these 3+ gallon blue plastic containers stack and connect for compact storage of 28 gallons.  (Lying flat, they might fit perfectly under a bed.)

4. Don’t forget agents to turn dirty water into drinkable water!

• The LifeStraw is a personal water filter that would allow you to drink from a puddle or stream.  Simple, light, easy to store, filters over 250 gallons of suspect water. Get one for every person, and every survival kit, particularly your car kit.
• Water treatment tablets or drops are widely available. They take about 30 minutes to purify contaminated water. Be sure to follow instructions exactly.

Let us know YOUR good ideas for storing water for emergencies.  Just drop them into the comment box to share!

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

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You made it through alive, but . . .

It’s bad enough to weather a storm or ride out an earthquake that leaves you with many thousands of dollars in damage. But, if local power is out, roads are obstructed and you can’t get to your money in the bank, chances are you have bills that are going to go unpaid for some period of time . . . long enough to incur late charges and even serious damage to your credit rating.

That’s compounding the damage! So what’s the remedy?

One solution – and a simple one — is to pay your bills as early and as automatically as possible.

The benefits:

• First, if payments are transferred automatically, even if YOUR power is out and you can’t access your computer, the transfer will be made timely.
• Even if you haven’t set your accounts up for automatic transfer, having a history of prompt and up-to-date payment gives you more options in contacting creditors and asking for relief. If your history includes being behind, and perhaps having black marks on your credit, even when you get through in a panic to your creditors (“Just went through the storm, couldn’t get to you until now!”) you are not likely to receive a hearty welcome.

Of course, if your paycheck stops because of the disaster, ultimately your bank account will empty. That’s another problem to be addressed another time.

An Interesting Parallel?

We don’t really have scientific evidence that people who take preventive measures to prepare for emergencies are more likely to pay their bills earlier than others, but anecdotal evidence would seem to indicate a parallel approach.

People who act responsibly on matters of self-protection are more certainly more likely to survive an emergency. Those that take a step further, looking out for their neighbors’ welfare as well as their own, can mean the difference between preservation of our society and its social values and allowing it to regress into chaos!

The question is, “Are you willing to help persuade your neighbors to take responsible preventive measures to protect themselves and their neighbors . . . or are you resigned to meet them at your front door with a shotgun when they are thirsty?”

Something to think about . . .

Joe Krueger
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

An excellent article by Michael Turton came out today in the Philipstown.info. It hit on important preparedness issues for cities in the east – or anywhere, for that matter.

Thanks to Wikipedia for this map.

(In case you aren’t familiar with this part of the country, the Town of Philipstown is in Putnam County, New York. Two incorporated villages lie within the Town. The Village of Cold Spring, focus of Turton’s article, is one of them. It lies across the river from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.)

If you don’t have time to read the whole article, here are highlights, with my comments. Every single one of these points could be an action item for your group or community!

1. Leadership. Set up a local committee if you don’t have one yet. Turton’s article refers to a specific committee being put together for the Village of Cold Spring. The Mayor and a Trustee sit on the committee, as well as residents.

2. Registry. Find out who in your community needs special care. First Responders need to know who lives where and what special circumstances exist, such as a need for oxygen or wheelchair access. Having this information allows them to check even before a storm hits. The Cold Spring committee is starting with volunteer participation in assembling a resident registry – but the committee is willing to consider a local law if necessary.

3. Local centers. Identify local venues that could serve as temporary respite centers – but not necessarily “shelters.” As reported in the article, a formal “shelter” may require security and medical personnel.

4. Emergency supplies. Put shelter in place as first priority, evacuation as second. Of course, shelter in place requires that people have survival kits for the first 72 hours, enough to get them home safely. And then, at home, they need more emergency supplies to carry them through.

5. Priorities. Set guidelines for the distribution of community resources: sandbags, medical supplies, pumps, fuel supplies, etc. Who gets first access?

6. Gawkers. Educate the community about the dangers of gawkers. (Aside from Virginia Nicols – This is a tough one! We’ve had neighbors get all in a huff when our local team kept them from driving right up to the site of a fire, impeding the fire department and hindering rescue efforts!)

7. Authority. Make sure people know HOW to turn off community utilities (gas, lights, etc.) and that the turn-off switches work in all conditions. (Another aside from Virginia: Authority to turn off community systems – such as natural gas distribution systems — needs to be limited, and those people need to be properly trained.)

Here in the west, more groups are forming this month to do precisely what the Village of Cold Spring has begun. What’s going on in YOUR community?  Let us know by sending a comment.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team