emergency essentials

Emergency Planning and Essentials

With modern conveniences such as electricity and technology, we have become accustomed to a standard of living in which lights, water, and food are always available at our fingertips. We have also come to expect that if we have an emergency, the paramedics, fire trucks, and police are just minutes away and ready to come to our rescue. All of these are essential to life and survival, but can you really expect them during a major emergency or disaster? The answer is quite simply…no.

No matter where we live, we are susceptible to some type of disaster. Floods, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, fires, major storms, viral outbreaks, or other disasters/major emergencies are a part of our lives and something we don’t usually think about until it happens.

This site is a guide that provides the emergency essentials from a voice of experience. What I will also bring you that no other site seems to address is what really happens after the disaster. I will give you an understanding of the process of recovery, where help comes from and when.

I have 25 years of experience in coordinating emergency/disaster response, both in the military and the local county sector. In my years of working in emergency services, I have experienced the full cycle of working with and talking to rescuers and victims from the start of the emergency through to the end, when the clean up and rebuilding begins.

When disaster strikes, emergency responders in your area are going to be overwhelmed. Your call for help will be added to the possibly hundreds or thousands already on the list, which is precisely why you need to be prepared to take care of yourself as best you can. Experts say be prepared to take care of yourself for 72 hours and to have a 72-hour kit of emergency essentials to sustain you and your family until help arrives. From my experience, that is a very realistic statement.

I have talked with victims afterward who said, “This property has never flooded before, I never thought this would happen.” All of their stories made me a believer that disasters can happen anytimhouse-ine and anywhere. Within The Emergency Essentials Guide, I will bring you practical information to help with your family’s safety by providing you insight to the different types of emergencies and disasters while providing a guide to the emergency essentials that will help you and your family be prepared to respond if such an event were to occur.

The Emergency Essentials Guide will take you through the process from preparation to response, what you should do and expect in the aftermath, and what you can expect from emergency services during and after a major emergency or disaster.

No emergency or disaster is the same. This site is not intended to guarantee your safety by following all ideas implicitly, but merely to help you think and prepare so that you are a little better able to respond and get you and your family to safety. The Home Emergency Plan is a good place for you to start.

Please take time to review the steps you can take to prepare you and your family. There won’t be time for it during a disaster.

This site is still very new and I will be adding pages as they are completed. Many of the pages will include a comments area at the bottom. Please feel free to leave comments on whether the information was helpful.

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Home Emergency Plan

Emergency Supplies Photo

Most emergency items can be found in the Preparedness Supplies Page

Nothing is more important than family, and nothing can put us into panic quicker than not knowing the welfare of our family members.

What if a fire breaks out in the middle of the night; or a tornado, earthquake, or flood strikes? You will awaken to chaos with survival mode in high gear. Where are the kids, did they get out? Are they safe?

That is the wrong time to be thinking of an emergency plan. A well-thought out home emergency plan that is practiced may be the difference in surviving such a nightmare.

Take a look at your home. Is your master bedroom on one side of the house and the kids’ bedrooms on the other? Most newer homes are designed like this to give privacy to the parents, but may cut you off from your children during an emergency.

Let’s take a look what you can do to improve your family’s safety in the home.

Designing a home emergency plan does not need to be rocket science and should not be complex. Use the following ideas to prepare and establish a home emergency plan:

Prepare Your Home for Emergencies

Smoke detectors on every level of the house, including the kitchen and all bedrooms. My thought is that you can’t have too many smoke detectors. One 9-volt battery a year per unit is not too much to ask.

Have at least two fire extinguishers in the house. Most people keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, which is always a good idea. What happens if a fire starts in the kitchen and you cannot get to that fire extinguisher? Always have another fire extinguisher in the living room coat closet or garage that can be accessed quickly.

Have emergency supplies:  Operating flashlights, spare batteries, water, and a radio available. It never fails that every time I go to use a flashlight, the batteries are near dead. Spare batteries are a must. There are many flashlights and radios that don’t require batteries. I personally have an emergency radio with a lever to wind up to charge it. It holds a charge for quite awhile and also has a flashlight built in. Very handy.

While on the subject of a radio, a weather radio is also very handy to have around. The National Weather Service broadcasts weather warnings specific to your area over these radios as soon as they are issued. The radio sits quiet until a severe weather warning is issued, then the radio puts out an alarm followed by the information. The information is a little more generalized than the information you get from your local radio station but it comes much quicker.

Keep important papers in a place where they can be grabbed quickly to take with you if you have to evacuate. Insurance papers, birth certificates, and other important items, it also would not hurt to keep a little cash there too.

What if a disaster strikes during the day when your family is all separated? Parents at work, kids in school or daycare, roads and bridges may be impassable and most communications may be down.

Make An Evacuation Plan And A Shelter In Place Plan.

Some emergencies will require your family to evacuate the house while for other emergencies it is safer to remain in the home and shelter in place.

Check windows in all bedrooms to ensure every member of the family can easily open them. In an emergency, this may be their only way out.

Are bedrooms on a second level? Installing roll-up evacuation ladders in every upstairs bedroom will provide a safe escape. This should be safely practiced before children ever have to use them in a real situation.

Establish a meeting place outside the home, such as the driveway or across the street at the neighbor’s house.

If the emergency is outside the home and it is safer to stay inside and shelter in place, have a designated meeting place inside the home.

To sit down and accomplish a home emergency plan should take no more than a couple of hours at most. You probably already have many items. Making an evacuation plan and shelter in place plan takes just a few minutes. The critical part is communicating it to your family and even practicing it now and then.

I tried to try and keep this a little short and sweet so as not to overwhelm anyone, but if you have any more items that could be added, drop me a comment.

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Family Communications Plan

One of the first things that will fail in a disaster is communications.  Unfortunately, it is one thing we need most following a disaster.  Most families are separated during the day and sometimes evening.  With parents working, kids going to school and their after school activities, we are rarely together at all times.

If disaster strikes, how will you be able to communicate with your spouse or child if their phone is down?  Establish a family communications plan.

Establish one outside family member or friend who does not live in the local area to be the point of contact for your family.  If all of your family knows to call Aunt Mary in Tucson if they can’t reach you, Aunt Mary can be the one person they can reach to get word that you are ok and where everyone is.  She becomes the go-between of information.  You can’t reach anyone at the school to find out if the kids are ok, but the kids were able to use another phone to call Aunt Mary.  Aunt Mary lives out of the local area so she should not be affected by the disaster.  This is very important.  Write Aunt Mary’s phone number down and put it in the kids’ backpack.

What if all communications are down?  Plan a meeting place that you all can get to.  Your home is usually the one place everyone knows to go, but what if it is destroyed or not accessible?  Establish an alternative meeting place away from buildings and other hazards.  Maybe meet at a park, parking lot, or some other place that may be accessible and not hazardous.

There are no 100% correct answers in emergency planning, but having a plan and communicating it with your family will give you a leg up if disaster strikes.

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