BETTER PLANNING NEXT TIME
If there is one thing that’s absolutely clear from the Katrina debacle, it is that, whether or not the federal, state, and local government authorities are willing to plan and organize for possible disasters in the future, there is a definite limit to how much they will be able to do. If ordinary people do not take on the responsibility of individual, household, and neighborhood planning, and the civic responsibility of demanding appropriate action from the various governments in our lives, nobody else is going to.
I grew up in Florida during a period when we could count on 2 or 3 major hurricanes a year. It got to be pretty routine to shutter the windows, bring in the lawn furniture and the cat, bring out the oil lanterns, the battery radio, and the Sterno stove, fill the bathtub with water, and hunker down for the storm. I don’t remember ever being afraid, even though in one storm, our neighbor’s roof blew off. This was just what you did.
A listfriend sends me the following fascinating link about how they do disaster planning in Cuba: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml That’s one place to start. Here are some others:
1) Federal and state laws require every state and local government agency to formulate, keep on file, and make available to the public, plans for evacuation or other appropriate response to natural and unnatural disasters (like releases of hazardous materials.) Of course, that doesn’t mean they actually do it. To find out who you need to contact to get a look at the plans in your area, start with your state’s EPA and work down from there. If you find out there are no such plans, or the existing plans are ridiculous, it’s time to start agitating, and getting in touch with local environmental groups. If there are such plans, and they look decent, get yourself a copy, and figure out where you and your neighbors fit in. (Example of a ridiculous plan, this one in southern Cook County, Illinois: in the event of a hazardous material release, the agency in charge plans to get a bunch of refrigerated trucks on-site. Period. No, this is not to keep emergency workers supplied with popsicles. It’s to provide a temporary morgue for the bodies.)
2) Look around you. Do any of your neighbors have mobility problems? Do you have neighbors who do not drive? Are you in a position to exchange heavy lifting for a place in a car, or vice versa? Work out a plan with your neighbors. If you can’t help out directly, put them in touch with someone who can. Make a phone tree or an e-mail list of people you will check with in the course of taking emergency action.
3) Get in touch with your neighborhood association, or your condo board, or your tenants’ union, to talk about disaster planning. That includes purely localized fire, flood, power outage, or snowstorm, as well as the really bad wide-area stuff. Figure out what all needs to be done in the event of the most likely and least drastic problem, and then work your way up to the most unlikely and horrendous one. If we have learned one thing this year, it is that very unlikely things happen all the time. Parcel out responsibilities for: communications, heavy lifting, health needs, pets, evacuation, shelter, and supplies.
4) Get in touch with the specialists in this stuff: the Red Cross (which I think teaches courses on some of this), your state EPA, federal EPA and FEMA (but wait till things quiet down for them), any local survivalist groups, and (honest!) the Mormons, who are really into things like stocking provisions. Set up meetings or classes for groups you belong to, like churches, PTAs, and social clubs. Google “disaster planning” and see what pops up in your area.
5) Make your own household plan. Figure out what to grab first, where to head to, how to communicate, and where to meet when things quiet down.
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me.
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?”
I grew up in Florida during a period when we could count on 2 or 3 major hurricanes a year. It got to be pretty routine to shutter the windows, bring in the lawn furniture and the cat, bring out the oil lanterns, the battery radio, and the Sterno stove, fill the bathtub with water, and hunker down for the storm. I don’t remember ever being afraid, even though in one storm, our neighbor’s roof blew off. This was just what you did.
A listfriend sends me the following fascinating link about how they do disaster planning in Cuba: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml That’s one place to start. Here are some others:
1) Federal and state laws require every state and local government agency to formulate, keep on file, and make available to the public, plans for evacuation or other appropriate response to natural and unnatural disasters (like releases of hazardous materials.) Of course, that doesn’t mean they actually do it. To find out who you need to contact to get a look at the plans in your area, start with your state’s EPA and work down from there. If you find out there are no such plans, or the existing plans are ridiculous, it’s time to start agitating, and getting in touch with local environmental groups. If there are such plans, and they look decent, get yourself a copy, and figure out where you and your neighbors fit in. (Example of a ridiculous plan, this one in southern Cook County, Illinois: in the event of a hazardous material release, the agency in charge plans to get a bunch of refrigerated trucks on-site. Period. No, this is not to keep emergency workers supplied with popsicles. It’s to provide a temporary morgue for the bodies.)
2) Look around you. Do any of your neighbors have mobility problems? Do you have neighbors who do not drive? Are you in a position to exchange heavy lifting for a place in a car, or vice versa? Work out a plan with your neighbors. If you can’t help out directly, put them in touch with someone who can. Make a phone tree or an e-mail list of people you will check with in the course of taking emergency action.
3) Get in touch with your neighborhood association, or your condo board, or your tenants’ union, to talk about disaster planning. That includes purely localized fire, flood, power outage, or snowstorm, as well as the really bad wide-area stuff. Figure out what all needs to be done in the event of the most likely and least drastic problem, and then work your way up to the most unlikely and horrendous one. If we have learned one thing this year, it is that very unlikely things happen all the time. Parcel out responsibilities for: communications, heavy lifting, health needs, pets, evacuation, shelter, and supplies.
4) Get in touch with the specialists in this stuff: the Red Cross (which I think teaches courses on some of this), your state EPA, federal EPA and FEMA (but wait till things quiet down for them), any local survivalist groups, and (honest!) the Mormons, who are really into things like stocking provisions. Set up meetings or classes for groups you belong to, like churches, PTAs, and social clubs. Google “disaster planning” and see what pops up in your area.
5) Make your own household plan. Figure out what to grab first, where to head to, how to communicate, and where to meet when things quiet down.
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me.
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?”
posted by WiredSisters at 1:03 PM
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