Emergency Preparedness:
Awareness & Education

Gayle Elam
Seattle area

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Emergency Preparedness Basics

Disasters are major events that can strike anywhere and at any time. Any preparedness step we take today will put us in a greater position for resiliency, whether from a major earthquake, a winter storm, an extended power outage, a terrorist act, or a pandemic flu outbreak.

Preparing yourself, your family, and your neighborhood is vital. Families and neighbors who are prepared are more effective in their response to a disaster and more capable of being self-sufficient for the first 72 hours after a disaster. Immediately after a disaster, traditional 9-1-1 and First Responder capabilities (fire, police, medics, and utility personnel) will be overwhelmed and unable to assist individuals as quickly as they usually do. In fact, after a large disaster it can take 3-7 days to get professional help. Your most immediate source of help are the neighbors living around you.

First Steps to Preparedness

First, start by preparing yourself and your family. Don't be afraid to ask for help, from me or others. Pick something and do it today, or this weekend! Next, get involved in preparing your neighborhood.

Step #1: Prepare yourself and your family.

Step #2: Prepare your neighborhood.

Neighborhoods that are prepared for emergencies and disaster situations save lives, reduce the severity of injuries and trauma, and reduce property damage. Neighbors participating in the program "Map Your Neighborhood":

In our city, an emergency management specialist teaches a "train the trainer" session to neighborhood team leaders, who then work with their neighbors to improve everyone's preparedness. Another benefit of the program is that working together as a team and contributing as an individual develops stronger communities and improves the quality of life in the community.

Our Story

Recent Events

I live in the Seattle area with my husband Tim and our two young children. Washington is subject to most kinds of natural disasters. We have experienced enough reasons to motivate our family to get prepared! Since 2000, we have ourselves experienced:

My snowy house (Dec 24, 2008)
  • a significant earthquake (magnitude 6.7, 45 seconds of shaking) - scary, but luckily small effects for us (Nisqually earthquake, February 28, 2001)
  • a small wildfire (I wasn't sure what I should take with us in case it spread across the main road to our neighborhood)
  • multiple winter snow and ice storms (stuck at home for several days, several times including December 2008)
  • a 60+ mph windstorm that toppled trees and caused an extended power outage during a cold snap (Hannukah Eve Windstorm, December 2006)
  • simultaneous closures of I-5 between Seattle and Portland and all mountain passes to Eastern Washington, leaving the Seattle area an "island" only accessible by plane (January 2009)
  • a medium-sized earthquake (magnitude 4.5, 10-15 seconds of shaking) 14 miles northwest of Seattle, near Kingston, Kitsap County, at a depth of 36 miles did no structural damage but was big enough to briefly knock out the regional earthquake emergency alert system (5:25 a.m. on January 30, 2009)

Also in that timeframe, one of Tim's cousins lost his home and his livelihood in Hurricane Katrina, and many friends and family members have been affected by other hurricanes.

Taking Stock, Getting Prepared

After the experience of the windstorm power outage (5 day outage and 40 degrees inside; 11 day outages nearby), my whole family has gotten into emergency preparedness. The kids get involved too. We have all worked on emergency supplies kits, our fire escape plan, and earthquake drills. I've gotten trained -- I took a CERT class, I got certified in First Aid & CPR, and Tim and I are getting involved in Amateur Radio emergency communications. My 4-year-old son loves to call out “Earthquake!” and have us scurry to our safe spots. My 6-year-old daughter thinks she'd like to have a short power outage or small earthquake so we can use our stuff. (I tell her we can turn the power off for the weekend, but we can only pretend about earthquakes unless one happens!)

Here are some of the things that we have done to get our family prepared. Many of them were driven by reducing problems in the future -- for example, we never want to be frozen out of our own home again! And we want everyone to be able to check in successfully in case we are separated during a disaster (home, school, work, playdate, etc.).

We hope that we are over-prepared for nothing much (like the earthquake 8 years ago) rather than under-prepared for "The Big One"! We hope that you will be too.

Resources

First Steps to Preparedness

Get Trained

More about Kits, Action Plans, and Preparedness

Amateur Radio (Ham Radio)

Last Modified: February 8, 2009 Heller Information Services