Tag: Neighborhood Disaster Survival series

I need more reviews. Can you help?

June 18, 2020 Action Items

Dear Reader,

The last few weeks have been so terribly distracting. This morning, though, I got some really good news.

When I checked my Kindle author’s account at Amazon I saw that several copies of our latest book were purchased, right in the middle of all that is going on.

THANK YOU to everyone who bought a book this week – or whenever you bought one! You are helping support our mission of preparedness. And you’re keeping my enthusiasm up for the hard work that goes into it!

And now I have a favor to ask.

As you know, when people shop at Amazon, many look closely at the reviews. But of course, most buyers don’t leave reviews. I need more reviews on all my books!

If you have bought one of our books, I would really appreciate it if you could please click at your book below and leave a review.

The links go right to the “Leave a review” form. (You do have to have spent $50 at Amazon in the past year to get your review published.) Your review can be just a few words. Or you can write a longer commentary about the book and how it fits with the work you do. Everything is legitimate and will help others make their own decisions . . . in many cases decisions that could change their lives.

Thank you for helping!

Our Q&A Mini-Series

Short Questions and Answers around one particular topic, designed to review your progress and stimulate your thinking.

We continue to add new titles every month or so. (Coming up next — Personal Safety and Save Your Pet)

Shelter in Place – Our newest mini-book, pretty timely, don’t you agree?

Pre-Disaster Plan – The “big picture” of why and how we prepare.

Pee ‘n Poop! Not exactly my favorite, but right up there in importance:

Emergency Communications – We use radios and walkie-talkies nearly every day at home and in our neighborhood group.

Custom Go-Bags – Always worth another look because everyone needs a slightly different bag.

Emergency Cash – Aspects and options you may not have considered.

Evacuate! There’s no time to prepare when your hear this word!

Car Emergency Kit – Anything can happen when you’re on the road!

Power Outage – No need for this common emergency to become a disaster.

Prepare Your Home for Earthquake – Not just in California.

Our Flagship Series

Neighborhood Disaster Survival Guide Series

for Organizing your Home AND your Community

Each of these books has an accompanying workbook for those folks who find it hard to get started or want help to stay on track. (The workbooks also lend themselves to working with a group.)

Emergency Preparedness for Apartment and Condo Communities

Emergency Preparedness for Mobilehome Communities

Emergency Preparedness for Homeowner Communities

Emergency Preparedness for Small Business

Emergency Preparedness
Meeting Ideas

My favorite because it brings back memories of so many great meetings!

Review here: http://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin=1072342820

Thank you again. If you enjoyed a book, it would mean the world to me if you left a review. Your comments help spread our shared preparedness message to more and more people.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide team

How to Improve Your Chances of Survival

January 3, 2019 Action Items, CERT, Neighborhood groups

First person to help is probably a victim

Start a new year, strengthen your team.

The first rescuers in a disaster are others who are right there. Your neighbors. Your co-workers. They know you. They know where you are likely to be, and whether they should search for you!

Improve your chances of survival by building a stronger team around you – in your neighborhood and at work.

If you’ve got the start of a team . . .

Last year (2018 was so long ago!) we focused on creating what we think are some helpful blueprints for building that team. To make them more useful, we customized by type of neighborhood you might find yourself in.

Each of the books in our Neighborhood Disaster Survival Series addresses a different type of neighborhood:

An apartment or condominium neighborhood, where neighbors come and go, storage space may be limited, and since you don’t own the entire building, some preparedness options are limited. Improve your chances of survival by sharing and working together.
A mobilehome community, where building standards vary so homes may be more vulnerable to certain natural disasters and top infrastructure threats include broken gas and water lines.
A suburban neighborhood where options may be more varied but homes are so far apart you may not even know your neighbors or where families may have a “My home is my fortress.” attitude.
A small business whose owner is typically torn between meeting current profitability necessities and providing for what feel like only potential business or employee losses.

Steady wins the race.

You can’t build a team quickly. The guides go into great detail about building teams. They focus on identifying leaders to start the process, and suggest that the leaders get Community Emergency Response Team training so they share some of the same skills and approach emergencies in a systematic way.

Once this core group is ready to go, its members can begin to pull in other neighbors. The guides have plenty of ideas for ways to attract neighbors and get them involved. Your team will find it easy to arrive at emergency preparedness recommendations for the whole neighborhood. They may even come up with a written plan. All this will improve your chances of survival.

Many, many neighborhoods around the country have followed a similar road to improving their resilience.

But what if you don’t have a team?

What are you doing or planning, at home or at work, to improve your chances of survival?

If you have trained CERT graduates in your neighborhood, maybe they have stepped up to take on a leadership role. Or maybe you could encourage them to do so?
If you have a property manager or business owner who is tuned in to emergency preparedness, has that person taken some steps for more resilience? Maybe you could suggest and support those efforts? (Lots of ideas here at Emergency Plan Guide!)
What if nothing is happening in your neighborhood, and you feel like a voice in the wilderness?

Here in our community our team has shrunk. So we’ve decided that it’s time for a renewed neighborhood effort. We’re starting – again – from scratch!

Set the tone.

won't you be my neighbor Remember this cartoon from the Advisory a couple of weeks ago? We’re using it to set the tone for our 2019 team-building effort. Friendly, not threatening or guilt-inducing.

Simple first step.

This week, we’re following up with the next step, providing neighbors with a simple form that they can fill out and share. The form is a simplified List of Emergency Contacts aimed at bringing neighbors together who may never really have met.

Emergency Contact Information Here are instructions we’re sending along with the form:

Fill it out this form WITH YOUR INFORMATION. Maybe your emergency contact is your daughter. Mention that. And under “Special notes” you could add your pet.

Make a few copies of this information about you, and make a few blank copies too. (You don’t need a form; a simple piece of paper will do.)

Then, step next door and introduce yourself and share this information. Ask neighbors to share their info in return. Exchanging info doesn’t mean you’re promising to be best friends. What you are doing, though, is making our neighborhood a friendlier place, and making it safer and more secure, too.

A good way to start the year, don’t you agree?

Neighborhoods change, and neighbors change. Here in our own household we’ve noticed one thing that happened in 2018 – we’re getting older!

But no matter the exact circumstances, having good neighbors, and being a good neighbor, will improve your chances of surviving a disaster. We are all in this together!