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Earlier this week, contributing editor Catherine Morgan kicked off BlogHer's week-long feature on emergency preparedness. This evening, I'll be following Catherine's lead by sharing evacuation safety tips.
The first step for family preparedness is to create a plan, and the Center for Disease Control's Emergency Preparedness and Response Program offers tips on how to do just that:
* Find out what could happen to you--Contact your American Red Cross chapter or local emergency management office, and be prepared to take notes.
* Make a disaster plan--Meet with your family and discuss why you need to prepare for disaster. Explain the dangers of fire, severe weather, and earthquakes to children. Plan to share responsibilities and work together as a team. Discuss the types of disasters that are most likely to happen. Explain what to do in each case. Pick two places to meet: right outside your home in case of a sudden emergency, like a fire, or outside your neighborhood in case you can’t return home. Everyone must know the address and phone number. Ask an out-of-state friend to be your “family contact”. After a disaster, it’s often easier to call long distance. Other family members should call this person and tell them where they are. Everyone must know your contact’s phone number.
* Practice your plan
The Department of Homeland Security offers insight on the choice between staying put and evacuating in an emergency:
Whether you are at home, work or elsewhere, there may be situations when it's simply best to stay where you are and avoid any uncertainty outside. There are other circumstances when staying put and creating a barrier between yourself and potentially contaminated air outside, a process known as "sealing the room," is a matter of survival. Use available information to assess the situation. If you see large amounts of debris in the air, or if local authorities say the air is badly contaminated, you may want to take this kind of action.
There may be conditions under which you will decide to get away, or there may be situations when you are ordered to leave. Plan how you will assemble your family and anticipate where you will go. Choose several destinations in different directions so you have options in an emergency.
And finally, FEMA offers information for preparing a safe room in your very own home:
The purpose of a safe room or a wind shelter is to provide a space where you and your family can seek refuge that provides a high level of protection. You can build a safe room in one of several places in your home.
* Your basement.
* Atop a concrete slab-on-grade foundation or garage floor.
* An interior room on the first floor.Safe rooms built below ground level provide the greatest protection, but a safe room built in a first-floor interior room also can provide the necessary protection. Below-ground safe rooms must be designed to avoid accumulating water during the heavy rains that often accompany severe windstorms.
To protect its occupants, a safe room must be built to withstand high winds and flying debris, even if the rest of the residence is severely damaged or destroyed. Consider the following when building a safe room:
* The safe room must be adequately anchored to resist overturning and uplift.
* The walls, ceiling, and door of the shelter must withstand wind pressure and resist penetration by windborne objects and falling debris.
* The connections between all parts of the safe room must be strong enough to resist the wind.
* Sections of either interior or exterior residence walls that are used as walls of the safe room, must be separated from the structure of the residence so that damage to the residence will not cause damage to the safe room.
For more information on emergency preparedness, stay tuned later this week for Denise's post on what to do after disaster strikes.
