Prepare Today. Sixty years ago President Kennedy told Congress the time to fix the roof was before the rain storm. October has come and Fall is here. With it come memories of Patriot Day and the rude reminder of a coming hurricane season.
As America enters the Fall, it is important to remember too many Americans are not ready for the disaster likely to strike their homes.
Prepare Today Provides Peace Of Mind Later
Prior to the tragic attacks of September 11, twenty-one years ago, some Americans did prepare for disaster in the form of Community Emergency Response Teams. Those teams were formed primarily to provide assistance during earthquakes. They empowered citizens with training to respond to basic issues such as first aid, utility control, and basic firefighting skills using a home extinguisher.
However, the foundation of a Community Emergency Response Team is a member’s ability to contain his own minor emergencies.
Home Disaster Planning
The primary focus of home disaster planning should be having a plan, writing it down, and practicing the plan as a family.
Questions to ask yourself is how will we get emergency information. Marshall County Emergency Management has a disaster notification system (link: ) that can notify you of impending emergencies based on your neighborhood.
You should also ask how will you and your family communicate with one another. Remember, cellular networks and the internet may be down depending on the type of event. Your communication plan may be to get to your home.
Do you have an evacuation route to either get to your property or escape to a second location? What is your shelter plan once you get there?
Families should know what their safe place is inside their home. There should be a clear understanding of how you will contact one another in the event of both disasters and smaller emergencies. Family planning should also address different situations. Families in southern Oklahoma should not need to worry about hurricanes, but tornado and severe thunderstorms are issues. Depending on your proximity to bodies of water, flooding may be an issue.
Family plans should also be written down.
One these questions are answered you can also consider your own situation. How many people live in your home and what are their ages? Are you caring for older parents or very young children? Beyond human family members there are questions about animal family members. There are different standards about pets in disaster shelters. If you have a plan to care and feed for your own pets you will be ahead when disaster strikes.
Finally, if disaster strikes and you can not get to a shelter, can you make it three days without help?
Disaster Kits
72 Hour Kits are designed to allow individuals and families to survive roughly three days without official assistance should they lose power, access to food and medical care, etc. These kits combine tools for controlling utilities such as gas shut offs with basic first aid kits and of course rations – food and water – so that every member of the family can get through the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Again, this topic effects young children, older adults, and everyone in between.
Your kit should have basic emergency medication, copies of important documents, a first aid kit, supplies to keep people warm, spare clothing, and more. Again, family pets should be a part of our 72 hour kit plan.
We have compiled a list of equipment that families should consider having ready for their kit. That list can be found on our website at www.marshallokems.com/disaster.
Marshall County EMS wants everyone safe, but part of this is fixing our roof, before our next community storm.
This article is published in the Madill Record as a service to their readers by Marshall County EMS team members.