discussed with family members or those in your group, so alternative arrangements can be made to get you to safety.
Back to School
If you’ve never taken a CPR or first aid course, or enough time has lapsed that you have forgotten most of what you learned, it’s time to sign up for class. During a crisis, outside help may not be available for hours or days, so it is important to understand the basics. You will need a detailed, easy to follow book on first aid. Jot one down at the top of your preparedness list.
Take a self-defense class. No one wants to think about having to defend themselves at a time when we should be helping one another, but the truth is there will be opportunists willing to do whatever it takes to survive. If you encounter such a person, being able to disarm them will allow you to flee to safety. If you are on a tight budget, check with your local YMCA as many locations offer inexpensive self-defense classes.
72-Hour Emergency Kit Accessibility
There is no way to know the exact day or hour when a crisis may strike. The best you can do is access and prepare for any dangers your location is likely to experience, especially with regards to earthquakes, mudslides, hurricanes, and flash floods. Ask your city planners what contingencies they have in place for emergencies and find out where your area shelters are located in the event of nuclear attack (more on this later in the chapter).
For the most part, preparedness will cover most contingencies. Even so, your personal safety could be directly tied to getting where you need to be. This is made much easier with a 72-hour emergency kit that contains three days worth of basic survival goods. Recommended items are listed at the end of this chapter. These kits are sometimes referred to as emergency kits, 72-hour kits, bug-out kits, or grab-and-go kits, but whatever one chooses to call them, there are an alarming number of folks who recommend they be stored at home. I have a short, concise retort for that notion: Dumb idea! If you are at work or out running errands when a disaster strikes, the roads will quickly become gridlocked, especially if you live in the city, while your emergency kit is stored uselessly in your basement. I rest my case.
Emergency kits are meant to provide food, emergency shelter, communications (wind-up or battery-run radio) and basic medical supplies to get you past the initial confusion and gridlock that comes with a disaster. They are nothing less than a lifeline that will see you through a disaster until you’re able to make it home or to your getaway location safely. If you take prescription medicine, it is important to have extra medicine tucked away in your emergency kit. For those of you who commute or carpool to work, it is wise to keep an extra emergency kit at work.
Time for an Escape Plan
As reflected in the scenario presented at the beginning of this chapter, it is important to find out what the emergency plan for your child’s school is, or if applicable, their daycare. Will your child be evacuated to another location in the event of a weather related disaster, or an earthquake, or a terrorist attack? If so, find out where that location is. Ask if you will be allowed to pick up your child and if you can appoint a designated contact person to pick them up in the event you are unable to reach them yourself. If so, be sure to give the school or daycare their name and give your signed consent to your contact person.
Select an alternate designated contact person who lives outside your immediate area who is unlikely to have experienced the same emergency as your location. If for any reason you become separated from a member of your family or group, and landline and cellular service is operable, the designated person can relay messages to help calm any fears over the safety of those missing.
Having just discussed designating a phone contact, it is important that you do not rely on your cell phone’s storage capabilities to access emergency contact numbers (more on this later on in the chapter under When Communications Fail). Here’s where nagging is perfectly acceptable. Make sure everyone has the designated person’s phone number written down and available at all times. Unfortunately, procrastination is a fact of life for many of us, but procrastination does not get along well with a crisis.
If your area takes a direct hit in a disaster, it is possible your neighborhood will be under evacuation orders. If this occurs, police and military personnel will be evacuating people out of the area and you may find yourself unable to get past roadblocks. Most of us have watched newscasts of residents forced out of their homes during a wildfire. And we’ve seen those same residents arguing with authorities to let them return. To my knowledge, none of them came out the victor. This situation highlights why you must have an emergency kit available for each member of your family or group.
You should select an alternative meeting place, away from home, in the case of evacuation. Each member must be familiar with the chosen location and a dry run, much like a fire drill, should be practiced. If things go wrong during the exercise, you’ll have plenty of time for re-do’s.
Familiarize Yourself with Breakers & Shut-Offs
If you’re woken in the middle of the night to mayhem; grab a flashlight (always keep one at your bedside) to make a home inspection. If you have natural gas lines running into your home, never flip on a light switch or use a candle or a lighter to inspect your home. This can be the vector to ignite built-up gas fumes.
Here’s an example: in the 80’s, two men from the gas company were sent to inspect a gas leak in a derelict building. Most of the bare light bulbs in the hallway of the building had been broken out; so one of the men flicked his Bic lighter. The result made him a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
Natural gas has an odorant added to it so it is easily detected. Natural gas must have the right concentration of fumes for it to be life threatening, but don’t risk it! If you detect a gas leak, get everyone outdoors, pronto, and keep the door open on the way out to let the dangerous fumes escape.
If you have propane appliances or a heating system, it is important to understand that unlike natural gas, propane is heavier than air, and does not dissipate into the air as readily as does natural gas. The same rules apply for a propane leak as they do with natural gas—get everyone outdoors, leaving the door open. Propane will settle to the lower levels of your home such as the floor, a basement, or crawl space and it will take longer to clear out of living spaces.
Familiarize yourself with the location of your natural gas or propane shut-off, and in the event of a leak, turn it off immediately. Propane will have a service valve on the tank, whereas natural gas shut-off valves are located on the meter, which is typically installed outside against the foundation of the house, but this can vary. In the event of a leak, turn the valve to the off position.
Some emergencies require turning off the power to your home at the electrical panel. Circuit breakers are typically behind an easily identifiable panel. Every member of the family old enough to be of help in a crisis should be taught about utility shut-offs to your home.
Water main shut-offs aren’t always as easy to find, especially in older homes where they can be buried in an obscure corner of a basement or crawlspace. I speak from experience. Having just finished renovations on a Victorian home, I was showing off the years of hard work to my brother and sister-in-law. Suddenly the wall in the entryway began to spout water (reminding me about the consequences of pride). It looked as if someone had turned on a showerhead at full force as water gushed down the stairway and onto the foyer. My brother ran to the netherworlds of the 1890-era basement to look for the water shut-off with the spiders and the other creepy-crawlies, and my sister-in-law and I began frantically sweeping the worst of the flood out the front door and onto the frozen veranda.
Ten minutes later, the torrent had only grown stronger as it blew out the newly installed drywall and I ran for the phone
