Basic Disaster Planning for Families

We are going to start a new series on how to plan for a variety of disasters.

Future installments into this series will focus on specific disasters and the unique things that apply to them. This initial piece gives a broad overview for the things that should be considered for virtually every disaster. 

These are the sorts of things that are the ‘best bang for one’s buck’ or are the most efficient, as they apply to everything. Doing these first and then focus on specifics later is generally more productive.

Disasters are generally broken down into two components: hazard and vulnerability. The hazard is basically the characteristics or properties of the thing that is causing the disaster. The vulnerability is how the hazard affects people.

Solutions for disasters will generally fall into two broad categories: 

1. Eliminate or reduce the potency of the hazard directly.

2. Do something to address the vulnerability.

These are generally not mutually exclusive, people can choose to do both.

Before going in-depth into hazard and vulnerability though, there are some basic things which can broadly cover most situations.

Most really bad disasters will force people to do one of two things:

1. Flee

2. Shelter-in-place

In both cases you actually do similar things, but the way in which they are implemented will be different:

1. Figure out all the stuff you and your family need to survive. Writing a list helps.

2. Use this list to game-out, talk through, or think through if it is sufficient for a disaster. This activity is normally called a disaster exercise. It doesn’t have to be very involved, the point is to ‘test’ the list, to see if it should be modified.

3. Determine how much of each of these things is needed to survive for some amount of time without outside assistance.

72 hours? 2 weeks? A month? Longer?

4. Figure out how these things will be available either:

a. In a convenient enough way where if the family needs to flee, the things can be carried in sufficient quantity.

b. With sufficient effective storage space if the family needs to shelter in place or ‘hunker down’ for an extended period.

With the flee option, people will run into practical limitations with how much they can carry or transport in a vehicle. Keep in mind that in some disasters, the vehicle may also be compromised so considering both situations might be good.

When sheltering-in-place one main thing to think about are the restrictions of the shelter itself. A studio-apartment does not have as much room as a  single detached house for long-term storage of large amounts of food.

Does the home have the ability to store foods in an area that is low humidity and away from sunlight? Certain foods will keep longer in more optimal conditions.

In many disasters, power is not guaranteed. Is the entire emergency food supply in freezers? This may not be practical in the worst-case situation. What about lentils, chick peas, rice, and other things with long shelf lives that can be kept in a pantry?

Does this mean buying enough rice to live for a year? Not necessarily, but what about just having one extra bag than normal just in case.

What about purifying water? If fleeing: do you have a way to do this? In the shelter-scenario: If there is a boil-water advisory do you have any experience with this and know what to do?

Have medications that the family needs? How will these be obtained in either scenario? In the worst-case if supply is unavailable, how much time until it is a serious problem.

Do you wait until the day the pills run out to get a refill? If a disaster happens on that exact day, this could be a problem.

What about compact entertainment. It is common to forget to put something in the flee-kit (like a go-bag) for entertainment. What about a deck of playing cards, a very small chess or checkers set.

Imagine the scenario, the home is gone, it is going to be at least a week until the family can reasonably expect help, what can be done to help the family de-stress in the inevitable downtime. 

What about a soccer ball?

Learn more and watch the full video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.