Tag: neighborhood

Doorhanger breaks preparation into four stages.

When it comes to being prepared, storing water and food are just the beginning. Unfortunately, many people stop there.

Our neighborhood CERT team wanted to get a better result. We researched and then broke preparation down into four stages to make it easier for people to get started building their emergency survival kit.

Our Doorhanger

Detailed instructions were published on a bright yellow doorhanger, distributed by the local block captain. Each hanger had the name and contact information of the  block captain, along with other emergency phone numbers.

The Process

Completing the four stages will take people several weeks. But they will be well prepared when they have accomplished it. Here’s how the doorhanger was laid out.

Stage One: Stay-at-Home Stash. Eleven things you and your family (including pets) need to Shelter in Place for at least a week. Superstorm Sandy showed just how important the Stay-at-Home Stash is.

Stage Two: Medical and Personal Care. These items – seven categories of them — will keep you alive and functioning. For senior citizens, this list includes spare glasses and hearing aid batteries.

Stage Three: Important Papers. Collecting papers and having them in one location, preferably protected from fire AND available to be moved, is the biggest challenge for everyone. Certainly, you can’t pull them together in just a few moments, and that may be all the time you have.  (We are working on getting electronic copies of important papers onto flash drives that would be easy to carry.)

Stage Four: Evacuation Kit. A bag or backpack contains items from the earlier stages, plus extra car keys, computers, etc.

Action Step for YOUR neighborhood

What would it take for YOUR neighbors to get prepared? You can download and duplicate excellent “Be Prepared” lists from the Red Cross, from CERT, and probably from your city.

We believe that customizing the message to our neighbors will make it more likely that they will follow through. Printing the list on a brightly colored door-hanger, instead of on a sheet of paper, makes it memorable. And delivering the message door to door is an important way to introduce and involve our CERT team.

P.S.  We’ll keep you updated on our progress!

UPDATE: It has been two years since the first Doorhanger was distributed. This year we updated, reprinted and distributed it again. So many people remembered it and still had the original in a drawer or on the refrigerator!

Why don’t people want to be part of an emergency response team?

In our years of dealing with emergency planning, at the local or regional level, people tell us — or don’t tell, but reveal — these reasons for not wanting to participate:

• For the most part it’s that they are busy . . . too busy they think to find the time to participate in one more activity.
• Some people are hard wired against joining any group or engaging in any kind of preparation.
• Some people just have a mental block against thinking about “negative” things. (Insurance agents encounter this type of person on a regular basis.)
• Another less lethal version of this attitude is the person who lives in denial.
• Then there is the hard-core procrastinator (this type is our absolute favorite).

How to overcome these obstacles?  The question technique…

While there is no magic bullet for any of these folks, we’ve found that – rather than trying to “sell them” on participating – giving them a list of questions like the following can have a sobering effect on most people with an IQ over 75.

When is a convenient time?

Question #1:  What day and time would be best for you and the safety of your family to schedule a major earthquake? What time would be the least inconvenient?

Question #2:  If you are away from home when an earthquake or other major disaster hits and your house is damaged, who do you expect will check to see if anyone needs rescuing and/or who will turn off the natural gas to prevent fire?

Question #3: If you are trapped underneath a bookcase or under the rubble of your (now former) house and impassable roads are preventing any official help, would you like to have trained CERT neighbors try to rescue you?

(If not, what color body bag would you prefer? They come in white, blue or black and heavy duty models are available for people over 240 lbs.)

Question #4: In the event of a real catastrophic event that lays waste to much of your community, which would you prefer:

a. A bunch of well-meaning neighbors running around in panic mode trying to figure out what to do,       or

b. Trained and organized Community Emergency Response Team Members springing into action according to well-rehearsed tasks for which they have volunteered?

Question #5: Following a widespread disaster, you’re busy at work, trying to save the business that provides you and your family with a livelihood, but you have children at school and an aging parent, one cat, a dog and one Gerbil at home. Can you save the business without knowing your neighbors are looking after the home front until you get there?

Obviously, we could come up with more questions. But the best questions will come from you and the people in your neighborhood who know the actual circumstances.

The point is simply to get people thinking about the consequences of not taking action.

Next, we’ll discuss the first steps in building a neighborhood or workplace CERT group.

Joe Krueger
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

P.S.  Action Item:  If you liked the questions, use them!  Pass them out at work, or share one-by-one via email.  Use them however you want to get the conversation started!