Disaster Preparedness Binder
Evacuate – Are you ready?
The knock comes at your front door. A fireman tells you that you have 20 minutes to evacuate. The wild fire has been burning for several hours now and is headed your way. Panic sets in. What should you take with you?
Fires, Flooding, hurricanes, the list goes on. At a moments notice you may have to leave your home and everything you own and hold dear. Do you know what you will take with you?
In my last post, Disaster Preparedness – Are Your Kids Ready?, I touched upon having a written disaster plan in your home. I strongly recommend that you have one. You may be thinking, well I know what to do. Do you? None of us know if panic will set in at the time of crisis. Will you be able to think of everything if you have a limited amount of time leave your home? What if you’re not home at the time? What if the only one at home is your spouse, who, lets say is not a survivalist, or perhaps just your children.
Disaster Preparedness Binder contains detailed instructions, actions, and information
If you have everything written, and kept in one central location, things will go smoother. I prefer the idea of a binder because editing and making changes is easier. Simply take out the outdated page and insert a new one. Everyone in your family should know the location of this binder and what disaster plans they will find within.
The more detailed you can be in your binder, the better preparedness for everyone involved. This is pretty much common sense, yes, but in the event that you actually are forced to deal with a disaster scenario, you will be very glad that you went through the effort – your survival might even depend upon it.
For example, if the gas needed to be turned off, pictures as well as step by step instructions would be the best – especially if you are concerned that your kids or others may be at home by themselves and have to deal with it. I would insert a picture of the valve itself, along with the proper tool to use (Having the right tool is very important – gas valves are hard to turn – leave the tool in a known location so you don’t have to scramble looking for it).
Some things to put in your binder would be:
- How to turn off the gas to your house.
- How to turn off the water to your house.
- How to turn off the electricity
- A list of items to take with you
- A list of contact information
The list of contact information and emergency phone numbers may include a pre-determined hotel destination (keep several destination scenarios). It should also include your home and vehicle insurance company, your financial institutions, and of course, family and friends.
If you think about it, you may surprise yourself how we rely on all of our phone numbers being stored and at the ready in our cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone, etc… Not too many people have a written record of all this data anymore. In a power down situation, you will not have access to this information.
Do you have a telephone tree in place? In a large scale emergency you may not be able to get through to anyone by phone for several days, or longer. On the chance that you can get only one call through, who would you call first? Does that person have the ‘tree’ and know how many others to make so all are informed? The idea is to call one person, say a relative living outside of your regional area. If circuits are busy you may only get one call through, so that one person will call others you have pre-determined. Likewise, other family members will know who to call first, etc… making for a single point of contact.
An evacuation list – Having thought about this ahead of time, a list will help insure that you will take what you consider to be irreplaceable. Some people keep a ‘bug-out-bag’ at the ready. If you already have a 72-hour kit in your vehicle (which you should), then your short term food and water needs will be met and you can concentrate on any other items that you want to take with you. Take some time and think about it, write it down, and their locations – so you can quickly go get what you need.
The point to all this is to write things down in a disaster preparedness binder. This will accomplish several things. First, it will cause you to think about what you would do in an impending disaster or evacuation order. Most people have never even thought about it whatsoever. Second, having written down the process, you will have ready and detailed instructions assuring that you will not forget anything that you have considered important actions.
A disaster preparedness binder will be different for everyone because it requires your own personal thoughts and will be different depending on your regional risk factors and the physical aspect of where you live and what you would need to do.
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