The 7 rules for protecting your valuables BEFORE disaster strikes

 This is not an endorsement of the 
company that authored

Flood Damaged home in Serbia

the article at the link below, but an endorsement of doing some serious planning for the loss of your home.  I know no one likes to think their home may burn down but they do. In 2013 the NFPA documented 1,240,000 house fires. Or that a quake or other natural disaster may make your home uninhabitable.

Document your goods
I can remember in the 70's inventorying my household goods before they were shipped to Europe, it was boring, and a hard slog. Writing down serial numbers, colors, etc.

But today all you need is your smart phone and a note pad.
So this holiday season make it a fun opportunity, grab a loved one, a glass of eggnog, your smart phone and go on a hunt to document your valuables.  Focus on Art work, collections, Jewelry, electronics. (Don't forget to take a picture of any notes you made- serial numbers, Cost, etc.) Snap away, then upload to a website (Yahoo, MSN, DropBox) something that will survive if your house doesn't.  I wrote back in 2011 about using the web to store valuable documents, and the same goes for pictures of your valuables. You can review it here and another one here.  I either own the internet or think its a good idea :)

So here is the article, get started.
The 7 rules for protecting your valuables BEFORE disaster strikes http://tinyurl.com/q8a2tmp

Happy Holidays

disaster_dave

Three Years since 3-11

I have written a couple of posts, and done several presentations on lessons learned from my time spent responding to Typhoon Yolonda in the Philippines; there were some good reinforced learning points for us. If you want to see a disaster (and recovery) that is more in line with what we in the Northwest will experience you need to look no further than the Earthquake and Tsunami Japan suffered just three years ago.

This morning the Seattle Times ran a good piece on where Japan is three years after the Tsunami.  Why just the Tsunami, because the quake really didn't on its own do much damage, the Tsunami on the other hand caught their planners off guard, and many perished, and many more were displaced as their homes near the water were destroyed.  Read the article in the hyperlink above, I'll wait for you here!

So what have we done here? Lots of planning, exercises and thought has gone into what we will have to deal with. And much more needs to happen, but the bigger question is what have you as individuals done to prepare?  If you have read any of my other blog posts you know I believe in the individual being prepared. 

Recovery WILL take a long time. I talk a lot about the things we take for granted in our daily life, look HERE to see how long it will take to get basic utilities back.  Seriously, 1-3 years for our major roadways.

The problem we in Emergency Management have selling this as a REAL event to the general public is, well ...apathy coupled "with it hasn't happened since 1700 and it won't happen".  But what if it does and you haven't done anything? Not only will you feel stupid, you may also cause you or your family to suffer more than they had to.

How big was the Tsunami compared to say "The Hammering Man" 

disaster_dave

CREW - a great site for resources and explanations 

What if your disaster gets out classed (or people forget)

What happens if you are in the process of recovering from your disaster and a larger (more sexy) disaster occurs?

I was in the Philippines recently deployed as a volunteer response team member  for ShelterBox.  I was assigned a mission to do follow up from the Bohol 7.1 earthquake, which got upstaged by Typhoon Yolanda. The Philippines largest Earthquake in 23 years upstaged by the strongest Typhoon ever.
Many of the people of Bohol that I talked with felt that after only three weeks the aid agencies left for the bigger (sexier) disaster. 

In defense of the aid agencies the death toll was 200 vs 6000+ dead and they didn't leave, they moved appropriate (in most cases) assets to the bigger event.

So how do you keep the focus on your disaster? Maybe you can't; but you can prepare to do what you can.

Have a plan before it happens, have the players ready to begin recovery as soon as something happens.
Have the political players in the loop early to keep the focus on your event.
Have your Public Affairs folks working to keep getting the message out, covering the local response angle.

Try this test. Write down places and events that are disasters right now.  Then go to one of the international aid groups and see where they are? What are they doing? Did you realize that happened? Was on going? People were suffering?

Now imagine that is your disaster and most people have forgotten about it?

DisasterDave

Life goes on around you

Destroyed home in Loon, Bohol

I returned from the Philippines last Saturday and have been thinking about what to share,
and there are a couple of things of interest for this blog. 

My past disaster experiences have been in the immediate aftermath of the event.  But for this deployment we are two months on from the event and in a different case 3 months on. 

When I arrived in Cebu it was apparent that this was not a disaster area.  I left and went to Bohol Island with my partner to do follow up on the 7.1 Earthquake in October(3 months on).  We checked into our hotel in the main city, no cracks, no damage to see.  

But 1.5 hours up the road it was a different story. Buildings down, bridges down, large landslides, it was a mess.  As we worked through the disaster area verifying there were still people in need, I kept seeing people along the main road digging a trench by hand.  Finally I asked someone what part of the recovery that was; oddly enough it was a project to bring high speed Internet to Loon (city we worked in) that had started before the quake.  

This popped up again when I was working in the port to clear our containers through customs and the port.  They were back to business as usual; we were still in disaster mode.  All around us life was getting back to normal.

So what happens when you are still working on your disaster and life 10-40 miles away is normal? Some things to think about:

• Don’t let them forget you are still working on recovery, don’t rub their face in it, but do let them know things aren’t back to normal

• Do ask for help; I did at the port I told the people helping me I was bring in aid for their countrymen, it did move things along (I still had to pay, but it moved along).

• Report out on what has been done and what is left to do. (If you are following ShelterBox you will see we do that on a regular basis.  We plan to be working in the Philippines until April on this disaster, we need to remind people it happened and 6,000 + people lost heir lives and millions lost homes and businesses).

That’s all for now

It’s not over till you say it is

Disasterdave

It's an hour after a disaster; do you know where your children are?

In November 2013 FEMA in partnership with Department of Health & Human Service and the Red Cross and several other organizations released Post Disaster Reunification of Children: A Nationwide Approach.

This document listed lots of roles (responsibility's) for  local, State, Federal governments and Non Profit partners in caring for and reuniting children with their families after a disaster.  They did not assign any "roles" to the parents.  The intent of the document is to make sure everything is done to accomplish that, but it starts with you the parent. You don't have to read it, but if you wish you can find it at the hyperlink above. 
Having had unaccompanied minors show up at a shelter is not a good feeling, it is a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.  So what can you do so the government doesn't have to do anything or at least make their job easier.

1. Have a family disaster plan. I have written about this before and it is where everything starts. As the report points out, not only have a plan but "child reunification cards" a simple card with contact info (including an out of area contact) and places to meet.
2. Talk to your child care facility and/or schools. What are their plans? Ask to see them? Make sure ALL of your contact info is on file with the school/child care facility. 

3. Know your children's friends family's (an extension of know your neighbors). 

4. What is your local emergency managements plan for reunification? Remember the "roles" I talked about? Ask some questions.
 
5. Do you have a medical care waiver signed at your son's school or child care facility?
Read up on HIPAA and FERPA so you are informed, both of these are designed to protect privacy but are often misquoted and/or misunderstood.  

6. Always heed warnings from local emergency managers or  the weatherman. Make sure everyone leaves home prepared as possible for the day.  This may not seem like part of the plan, but it is!
 
7. And of course please do talk to your children (and spouse, parents, etc) about disasters and the planning you have taken to make sure everyone is safe.
This is one New Years item to take care of soonest.

DisasterDave

Cookies never suck

The title stems from a conversation I had a couple of years ago with like-minded Emergency Managers from around the world enrolled in the Emergency Management Academy. An endeavor that had me read a large volume of emergency management books over the course of a year, along with being involved in great conversations weekly with my fellow Fellows.

The gist of the conversation was appreciation of the people running the disaster response and recovery.  Not the first responders (who you should thank) but the Emergency Management Team behind the scenes coordinating the response, who almost never get thanked in a public way.  So as you go into your next disaster; regardless of whether it is a tornado, hurricane, quake or mass shooting remember there is a man or woman behind the curtain.  They do everything from coordinating the response, to helping move things along in the recovery phase.  And if they did everything right your disaster experience was probably better than it would have been without their daily planning.

So search out the location of your local Emergency management office, bake some cookies and deliver them to the EOC with your thanks.  You will make some tired emergency managers day, because cookies never suck.

Disasterdave

What does the Vulnerable Population look like?

“It is important to understand that to be young or old, a woman or a person with a disability or HIV does not, of itself, make a person vulnerable or at increased risk. Rather, it is the interplay of factors that does so...” (The Sphere Project- Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response)

I find I am often in conversations about how to serve people after a disaster and I hear planners talk about vulnerable populations; I wonder through what lens they are quantifying that population?

In most cases it is often new immigrants, people with obvious disabilities and the poor. While those are the usual suspects as the movie line goes, I believe it is important realize being from one of those categories is not what makes you vulnerable, it is the addition (or subtraction) of something.

Our daily lives are fairly comfortable by most means in the first world, but when something happens like Sandy, it quickly can become a 3rd world working area.  With the subtraction of electricity, and easy access to the grocer, doctor and other support systems we depend on, someone who isn't in our plan as a vulnerable Population can quickly become vulnerable. 

As you look at your community whether you are a Emergency Manager, a CERT leader, an MRC member or ant neighborhood program, look deeper than the pre identified "Vulnerable Pop" look at the family with a single parent, look at the older couple down the street who walk their dog, and seem to get along pretty well for their age, look at the new comer who just moved here and doesn't have connections to the community yet. 

Look at the UN definition above and as you view your population through that lens ask yourself " If that person (family) lost one of the following - power for a week, or access to the grocery store, drug store, or clean water or anything we take for granted would they become vulnerable?"  If the answer is yes, you have some more planning and teaching to do.


disaster_dave

Solar Storm

Imagine something so powerful it can knock out communications and the power grid… and you can’t see it!   I know that is why I have been holding off writing this blog post, it sounds like science fiction.  But in fact it has happened.  In 1989 a Quebec power grid went down causing millions of dollars damage.  A Solar Storm on the sun caused this financial disaster.

On the plus side these solar storms (Sunspots) cause beautiful auroras in the Northern skies.

Even FEMA is thinking about what to do about this hazard.  Why is this important?  A large event could damage our electrical infrastructure badly; and we aren’t talking about replacing fuses.  These are large electrical parts that are not kept around for replacement because they are so costly. 

So what do we as folks on the ground do? Unfortunately I am not sure there is much we can do; the world we live in runs on solid-state electronics; our cars, I-phones, Radio, pretty much everything.  While its true you could protect your I-phone from EMP by taking steps you can find on the Internet.  But if no one else does and the Power grid is down…

You can read and become informed, start with the links in this article.

You can make sure your elected officials know this is important.

Sometimes being aware is the best thing you can do.

disaster-dave

If you can't work...

I recently read an article about business recovery , unlike other doom and gloom articles it was actually uplifting.  They did the right things and their business survived. So what about you!
I have spent the last few months working with you on preparing your home and family for disaster, which is all well and good.  What about your workplace?  Whether you are the owner, manager or employee you have some responsibility.  If you are the owner or manager you are responsible to make sure there is a plan and it is exercised. Yes you did a fire drill to make the local fire folks (and your insurer) happy but what else have you done to protect your business.

• How will you make sure your employees are safe (you better care, you can't open without them)?
• Do they know how to get in touch with you (besides your office phone)? 
• Do they know how to contact each other for support (offer or ask for)?
• Where are your customer records stored (box in back or in the cloud)?
• Do you have an alternate place to work?
• Do you have adequate insurance for the hazards where you work (the hazards could differ from where you live)?

Even if you aren't the owner/manager you have a responsibility to ask questions, understand your place in the plan.   If you are reading this (and probably other things like this) you might be the person with the most knowledge and in a position to help.

Do one thing today
disaster_dave

Recovery...Do it now!

We often think of Recovery as something that comes AFTER!
But in order to recovery quickly and effectively, you need to do some planning during  your preparedness phase.
I have written in other blog posts about getting your password and important documents in the "cloud" or on a jump drive (secured with a password).  Because when its time to file the paperwork, does your spouse know your Social Security Number? Do you know your account numbers for banks, insurance, car's VIN#?
Think of all the things you can easily put your hands on by walking to your filing cabinet...What if its under the pile of rubble that was your home (from a quake, tornado or fire) you need to have all this info somewhere safe.
This weekend pull out an excel sheet and start listing all of the things you may need to file for help with the federal government, get it written down and then protect it with a password. Then put copies in several places. A jump drive in your car or at work. In the cloud by emailing it your Yahoo/Gmail/Hot mail account. And tell your better half the password too.
To find out what you need check out disasterassistance.gov

Lets get ready to recover
disaster dave