by Lisa Bedford
DO keep a bottle of ibuprofen handy. Sooner or later, someone in the family will have a headache, a backache, sore feet, aching shoulders, you name it!
DO have floppy hats for the kids, in particular. A baby sleeping in a stroller or baby carrier is vulnerable to sunburn.
DO put one of the slower adults at the head of the group, whether walking or bicycling, the younger members in the middle, and finally, a strong adult at the rear. The leader can set the pace, the younger members are protected, and the adult bringing up the rear can keep an eye on the whole group and assist when necessary.
In populated areas, DO be prepared for authorities to direct traffic, both pedestrian and otherwise. You may or may not be allowed to venture on to a route other than the one officially designated.
DO take advantage of alternate modes of transportation, if the opportunity presents itself. Depending on your location and the readiness of local emergency personnel, public transportation may be available. If you have a pocketful of change and small bills, you’ll be ready.
DO think creatively if you have handicapped or elderly family members. Explore the possibility of using a modern rickshaw or a recumbent bike. The website Bikes at Work has some creative and very heavy duty options for bike trailers.
DO plan on taking frequent breaks, whether walking or bicycling. It’s far better to arrive at a destination a couple hours late than to collapse in exhaustion halfway there.
Getting ready to leave: the final moments
One of the hardest parts of evacuation is not knowing how your home will fare while you are gone. In an urgent evacuation, you most likely will not have time to do more than race out and hope for the best. In a planned evacuation, however, there is a lot more you can do to prepare and secure your home for your return.
Here are a few tips:
Turn off utilities such as gas and electricity unless you are expecting freezing temperatures.
Prepare for freezing temperatures if your evacuation occurs in the winter. You don’t want to return home to frozen pipes.
Drain all outside water lines, including those leading to a swimming pool and a sprinkler system.
Turn off water to outside faucets, if possible.
Cover outside faucets with anything from a towel or old blanket to a foam outlet cover specially designed for this purpose.
Shut off the main water supply and flush all toilets.
Insulate all water pipes, both hot and cold, in unheated or potentially unheated (if the power fails) areas of your home or outbuildings, such as crawl spaces and attics.
Even several sheets of newspaper wrapped around pipes can protect pipes in areas that are moderately cold.
In the coldest parts of the country, protect pipes with thermostatically controlled heat tape.
Disconnect and drain garden hoses and store them for the season. When they freeze, they can increase water pressure throughout the entire plumbing system.
Leave the gas and electricity connected and set the thermostat no lower than 55 degrees.
Board up windows if warranted. Close all curtains, blinds, and shutters.
Make sure all windows and doors are locked. Be sure to take your house keys with you. Leave one with a trusted neighbor who might be staying behind. They may have to enter your house if flooding or some other emergency occurs.
If you’re expecting heavy winds, bring inside patio furniture, trash cans, toys, bicycles, and anything else that might get blown away — or float away, in case of a flood.
Disconnect major appliances, other than the refrigerator and freezers, even if the power is already out. When it comes back on, the surge could damage appliances and electronics.
Disconnect computers and unplug everything else throughout the house.
Clean out your refrigerator. Condiments like ketchup will probably be fine, but items that will spoil easily should be taken with you, tossed, or put in a deep freeze. Unpleasant smells are very difficult to get out of a refrigerator, as liquid from rotting food can drip into the insulation. A chest freezer is worth the risk, especially if it contains a larger amount of frozen foods. Add a few 2-liter bottles filled with water and let them freeze overnight. They’ll provide an additional layer of insulation to keep frozen foods cold for as long as possible.
Quick check to know if the freezer contents are a loss or not: Put a bag of ice cubes in the chest freezer before you leave; even a sandwich baggie of them will do. When you return, if the ice cubes are still separate, your freezer is fine. If they have formed a solid block, consider the freezer a loss.
A word about insurance
According to professional emergency managers, there’s nothing like having your own private insurance when it comes to recovery and restoration of property following a disaster. It’s not recommended that you plan to rely on FEMA or any other type of government help when it comes to getting back on your feet.
FEMA primarily provides disaster assistance to state and local governments, not to families, and even then those loans are given only in major disasters and are based on income level.
Even if you have homeowner’s or renter’s insurance, set aside some time to review your policy with the company or your agent. It’s surprising how quickly our insurance needs change, and it’s no fun to find out that your policy doesn’t quite cover a new claim.
Ask about flood insurance, no matter where you live. When I lived in Phoenix, smack dab in the middle of the desert, homes would flood on a regular basis due to flash floods. Your homeowner’s insurance will cover flooding if it occurs within the house, such as broken pipes. Once the water enters through the outside, however, that damage isn’t covered unless you have flood insurance.
Earthquake coverage is another specialty policy you may want to get, especially with earthquakes cropping up in unusual places lately. I never thought of Oklahoma as an earthquake hotspot, but there’s a lot of shaking going on in that state!
Use a camera, even if it’s just your cell phone camera, to take pictures of every room of the house. Include photos of appliances, walls, and ceilings. You want to document, in detail, the condition of your home and all its contents prior to any damage.
Once damage has occurred, document that also. One insurance expert emphasized to me the importance of having photo documentation, and with cell phone cameras, there’s no excuse to not take care of this step.
Your insurance company will provide the best coverage and service by far, over FEMA or any other agency.
If you do experience a major disaster, think Katrina or a devastating earthquake, contact FEMA to find out what assistance you might qualify for.
Rehearsals: practice makes perfect
All your evacuation plans may be in vain if you don't take time for a dry-run. If you find yourself in a situation where you must make an immediate and urgent evacuation, you will automatically fall back on behaviors and actions that are familiar and “easy.” When you have no time to do anything but react, you need to be sure that your immediate gut reactions are ones that will keep you safe.
In martial arts and self-defense training, this practice is referred to as “muscle memory.” A new self-defense technique will not help you if you can't think how to execute it when your life depends on it. The technique must be practiced so many times that you can do it when you're caught off-guard at a moment's notice.
Martial arts instructors aren't the only ones to preach muscle memory. Evacuation rehearsals are a regular fixture of American embassies and military bases throughout the world. These are much more elaborate than your average family evacuation strategy because they tend to involve helicopters, aircraft carriers, and lots and lots of hot dogs.
How can you organize a practice evacuation for your family? Set aside some time one weekend when all family members will be home and no one is busy. Time yourselves to see how long it takes from the moment you announce the evacuation until all supplies are in the car and all family members buckled in.
Before launching this new family experience, create your own Evacuation To Do List based on your own circumstances. You can use the checklist in the Appendix of this book to help you get started.
With the help of your checklist, it’s time to have a family meeting to review the plan and the list. Each person should know what to do, even if it’s as simple as getting their favorite toy and going outside to sit in their car seat!
Once you’ve finished your family’s evacuation rehearsal, evaluate how long it takes to run through your list. Identify potential problems and create a plan that will help you to smooth out these problems in an event of an actual evacuation. Schedule one of these drills every 60-90 days. That will cover different seasons and weather conditions and will establish a type of muscle memory for family members.
Here is a sample list. You’ll find a copy of this checklist in the Appendix that you can customize to your own needs.
Evacuation to-do list
Each person has on shoes and a jacket.
Animals in crates
Pet evacuation kits packed
Evacuation kits in car
Grab-n-Go binder in car
Purses/wallets/cell phones/chargers in car
Fireproof safes in car – If they are too heavy, leave them behind.
Suitcases in car — In a planned evacuation you’ll have more time to pack additional supplies.
Water bottles in car — Individual water bottles should already be packed in emergency kits. Add one or two cases of water bottles when evacuating.
Pack additional personal items and put in car.
Pack additional clothing items and put in car.
Pack additional food items and put in car.
Refer to Last Minute Packing List and make sure those items are packed and in the vehicle.
Load extra filled containers of gasoline.
Pack infants and toddlers in their car seats, if temperatures permit. This will allow everyone else to rush around, taking care of last minute details, without worrying about the young ones.
Optional: based on situation and weather conditions
Turn house water off
Gas off – Don't do this during a rehearsal! You won't be able to turn your gas on by yourself; it must be done by a representative from the gas company.
Follow other guidelines found in this chapter to get your house ready, depending on the crisis and current weather conditions.
Final actions
Load animals in car
Lock all doors and windows
Set security alarm
Contact communications hub and alert him or her to your time of departure, route, and expected arrival time.
Make sure everyone is in the vehicle
Case study: Hurricane evacuations
There’s no way to execute a full-blown city-wide evacuation in the name of rehearsal and it would be crazy to try, but you can still learn from the past and apply lessons learned to future disasters. As I’ve mentioned, the plan for evacuating the city of Houston during hurricane Rita in 2005 was a disaster. To put it another way, there was no plan.
Evacuees reported that they spent on average twelve hours on the road. For one family, a trip from Houston to Austin took almost 19 hours when it should have taken just three! There was no way for ambulances to make it through the gridlock to administer relief to those involved in medical emergencies. Many people ran out of gas and had to sleep in their cars on the highway. It was chaos. There was, however, a silver lining: when Hurricane Ike hit Houston in 2008, city officials had a much better idea what they were facing and planned accordingly.
During the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Ike, the city set up emergency pit stop stations with ambulances, portable toilets, and fuel trucks. The city headed an aggressive and effective education campaign to ensure that those outside the danger zones would stay home instead of contributing to traffic. The evacuation was not picture-perfect, but it was a great improvement over the previous attempt.
This lesson is applicable to individual families as well. It is very safe to assume that you will run into problems the first time you evacuate. Therefore, you really don't want the first time you evacuate to be during an actual emergency when emotions are running high and the stakes are even higher.
Even if your emergency kits aren’t fully packed and you have no idea, yet, of a destination, schedule a rehearsal anyway. Nearly everything on the Evacuation To Do List can be included in the drill. You will learn so much from the first drill that will help refine your preparations and plans. Be sure to keep track of how much time it takes before everyone and everything is loaded in the car and make a list of everything that goes right, and wrong! Use that information to improve the process, one rehearsal at a time.
You’ll find a copy of this Evacuation To Do List in the Appendix.
Your mindset really matters
This may be the most difficult part of emergency preparedness. You can plan, prepare, and organize until the cows come home, but if you are the kind of person who will panic when things get hairy, all your preparations will be for nothing. You have to train yourself to have a different outlook altogether.
One reason this is vital is that our kids pick up on our emotions, and the only thing worse than Mom or Dad panicking is having a passel of kids also hyperventilating.
In a situation like an emergency evacuation, keep in mind Robert Louis Stevenson’s quote, “Share your courage but keep your fears to yourself.”
Lots of superhero action movies depict the protagonists doing all kinds of brave and reckless things as if it were all in a day's work. “Sure, I'll just take out seven or eight guys now and then save the city before lunchtime. No big deal.”
The implication is that these characters do not feel fear or pain the way normal people do. The implication is also that this is somehow the emotional ideal.
The reality, of course, is that real-life superheroes – first responders, like firefighters, EMTs, and military personnel – face an extraordinary amount of fear when they are called upon to do their jobs. But they have developed the skills to control their emotions instead of being controlled by them. They don't think about what must be done, they do it. Admittedly, this is easier said than done.
Human "wiring"
I could share many amusing anecdotes from horror movies about people who flip out and then die. My favorite example is the guy from Jurassic Park: The Lost World who, while trying to hide from a Tyrannosaurus Rex, freaks out when he finds a snake crawling all over him. He blows his cover and immediately, the T-rex eats him. Maybe that snake wasn't even poisonous but because he panicked, he lost his life. Don't be that guy.
We are wired for fight, flight, or freeze in dangerous situations. Freezing can actually be very beneficial in certain dangers (such as that T-rex), but in modern life, we need to learn how to overcome this tendency so we can act when we need to. (If the man had been rational, he would have recognized the T-rex as a greater threat than the snake.) The "wiring" we are born with can make this harder, or easier.
Per a National Institutes of Health study2, higher anxiety levels before a dangerous event make flight or freezing responses more likely. If you are a person who is a worrier, the best thing you can do to improve your mindset and your ability to respond is to learn how to set worries aside and take action on those you have some control over. If you are naturally an easy-going, no-worries person, staying calm in an emergency will probably be easier for you.
Muscle memory
In an emergency, it is critical to prepare in advance, and that preparation is both physical and mental. This is why it’s so important to think through possible emergencies, physically plan for each, and then go through the motions of a rehearsal, or drill, as though the actual emergency was taking place.
As you rehearse the various components of an evacuation, you’re not just exercising your brain, but your body is also remembering the motions, tasks, and appropriate reactions. Muscle m
emory!
If you have practiced taking bicycle routes on your backwoods escape plan, carrying loaded backpacks many times as a family, you will automatically follow the right route and adjust your packs so they don't hurt. If you drive your escape route every time your family takes a trip in that general direction, you will follow it even when you don't intend to. It doesn't matter how simple the item or task, practicing using it during normal life will help lower stress during an emergency because you will know, 100%, that you can do what you need to.
Establishing muscle memory by mentally and physically rehearsing the steps in an evacuation can help take away anxiety.
Anxiety
Sometimes it seems like everyone is anxious today. Even my friend's dog has severe anxiety problems! Anxiety is clearly bad for us and, as noted by National Institutes of Health, it makes our responses worse in an emergency.
John Leach, author of Survival Psychology, wrote, “In an emergency, 75% of people have to be told what to do. Only 10-15% of the people act appropriately, leaving the remaining 10-15% sitting on the sidelines acting inappropriately.”
Clearly, we need to reduce our anxiety responses. But how?
Part of the answer is being mentally prepared and developing muscle memory, but there is more to it. We need to accept that "bad things" happen all the time and most of them aren't as horrific as the worst-case scenarios our brains create. In the case study below, Beth’s son fell in a pool, but didn't have any lasting physical or mental scars. You probably have similar events in your own life. What was it you feared the most, and how did it turn out?