Chances are, you or someone close to you has special needs – anything that prevents you or them from following emergency instructions or fully using traditional disaster preparedness and response services. Consider the people around you – coworkers, staff, clients, family and loved ones – and make sure you’ve factored their special needs into your emergency plans.
Visit http://www.firstvictims.org/vulnerable.html for a list of special needs.
If you’re looking for a holiday or birthday gift for a loved one, consider giving the gift of safety to show how important they are to you. These items help keep your loved ones safe and secure:
As the window for making your final charitable contributions for 2005 comes to a close, know that some donations can tangibly increase the preparedness of your community. Consider donating to your favorite local charity these items or the dollars to purchase them:
Take a quick moment to flip through your 2005 calendar and see how much time you devoted to planning, preparing and mitigating disasters vs. reacting, responding and dealing with the consequences of the lack of plans and preparedness. Mark out some quality time now in your 2006 calendar for doing those things that we wish had been done in the Gulf Region before Hurricane Katrina.
Some people in your circle of influence will make life and death decisions based on the welfare of the animals they love. Share with them important information like information building, pet preparedness kits; microchipping for pets, and copying pet medical records, so they can help prepare their pets and themselves.
Use Thanksgiving visits as an opportunity to increase your preparedness and the safety of your friends and family. Photos can be a huge emotional gift after a disaster, and they also help identify valuables and can speed insurance claims. Digital cameras make this even easier. Take photos of:
Send copies – printed, digital or negatives – to your out-of-area contact for extra safety.
Planning and executing a full exercise of your agency’s disaster plan can be a big job. Consider flexing tiny pieces of the plan, more often. Suggestions:
1) Test your ability to send a simple test message to everyone on the team and see how long it takes for them to respond.
2) Conduct a quick “Drop, Cover and Hold” drill – making sure everyone does it correctly.
3) Do a random call-down see if your team knows what supplies are on-site and where they are stored.
NERT (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team) or CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training can be a very powerful way to build the skills and readiness of your community. Take time to share and post information about these programs with your staff, volunteers and community.
Some documents in your emergency Go Kit contain sensitive information such as account numbers or passwords. Using a simple code can help protect the information in a way that allows you to access it, but limits access by others.
Simple codes include:
- Add 1 to each number: for example, 55629 would become 66730.
- Switch the first & last numbers in each series of numbers: for example, 365-0319 would become 563-9310.
Make up your own code, but keep it simple enough that you will remember it. Even a simple code can help deter unauthorized access.
In 2005, October 30th is the day to change your clocks (in the United States). Because this happens twice a year, it is an excellent time to remind your community to update their preparedness supplies in several key ways:
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