Have a Drill, Have a Drill
Woops… forgot.
You need a Plan first.
Does your local living group have a Plan in case of emergency?
Oh no! you say, not a Plan!
What a pain!
Yeah, most plans are. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The most basic plan is simple.
Just decide:
1. Where everyone should meet in case of a disaster or emergency.
2. What each person should do if it’s impossible to get to that place for one reason or another.
That’s it.
Remember that the probability of cell phones working is very low. Don’t spend too much time trying them, especially when the effort could be better spend getting out of the way of whatever is coming.
Consider that streets and highways may be gridlocked. Got a mountain bike?
Take into account the physical capability of each person. How far can they reasonably be expected to walk? Always wear good walking shoes… or at least have them in the trunk of your car. With good socks. Oh, the joy of sox!
Look at the plan again after you make it. Is it actually possible? Or would harsh reality intrude if something actually happened? If so, have another go at it.
When you’re all satisfied with it, write it all down and give everyone a copy. Everyone will lose the copy. But they will have seen it once, and that may be enough to make all the difference in case things do go totally south. Put your original someplace you can find it to make more copies after everyone loses theirs. Because you will probably lose your copy, too.
When will you know they have lost their copies? During the drill!!!
The Drill.
The drill is fun. In the middle of the night, someone blows a loud whistle. (Did I mention that everyone must have a loud whistle? Absolute necessity for disasters and emergencies, for all sorts of reasons.) Do NOT blow your whistle, ever, unless either 1. it is the REAL THING, or 2. everyone has agreed to have a drill in the next few hours sometime. Otherwise the disaster emergency you will be having will be the others beating you up. I would help them.
When the whistle blows, everyone goes to a prearranged place. This is the Primary. All the people who are home when an emergency happens… say a fire or an earthquake or a tornado or whatever your area is prone to… go to the Primary and get together in order to plan what to do next. It is usually a good thing to get out of the house, since the most likely scenario is a fire. It is also good in most other instances, but you will have to decide whether or not it is right for you in your circumstances. The point is to have a Primary where everyone goes when they hear the whistle. And it is essential that it will be the most probably safe place to be.
At the Primary, check to see everyone is there. Decide beforehand whether to go back after a missing person. Be realistic for your situation. In some cases, that will just cause more loss of life. Think about it during the drill. You may have to make that decision for real some day.
If you know people are not at home but somewhere else instead, as often happens in a real emergency situation, that’s where the Plan comes in. If the Primary is where everyone is supposed to meet, you are already there. Wait for the others, unless that puts you in danger.
And that is where the Plan can fall apart, unless you prepare now. All must agree what will happen if the Primary is unsafe. Do you leave a note in a waterproof plastic bag under a certain rock in a certain place, saying where everyone is supposed to meet? Do you paint that information on the side of your building (not advised… everyone can see it). Do you … what? Leave voicemails on a system that will probably not work during the emergency? Think about it. This is perhaps the most important part of the Plan. It is what you do when things go wrong, when things do not go according to Plan. Unfortunately, that is what usually happens during every disaster. It is the primary way an emergency becomes a disaster.
So have a backup. Like everything having to do with emergencies, have a backup. What to do, where to go, if things are worse than you think they’re going to be. Now is the time to really sit down and put some brain power into it. If it happens, there is rarely any extra thinking time available. Time’s up.
But now the sun is shining, and all things are possible. Please take some of that relaxed time to think over these things, and make a really workable Plan… and a backup or two.
