Fine-Tune Your Household Communications Plan
This month in our Prepare in a Year program, we’re focusing on communication: the technology and the plans required to keep you and your family connected. Take a few minutes in March to think through the following three potential scenarios. Doing so will reveal gaps in your preparation.
Scenarios
Scenario 1. We get a 7.0 earthquake on the Seattle Fault, which runs through the southern part of Bainbridge. The kids are at school on the island. You’re at home. Your spouse is at work in Seattle. Your home is still intact but your leg is injured and you can’t walk well. What happens next?
Scenario 2. It’s a windy day in late summer and someone on the South End uses a flame weeder on their very dry lawn. The grass ignites, and BIFD rushes to extinguish the fire, but it grows hot really fast, and the wind pushes ash and embers northeast. Pretty soon, a major part of the center of the Island is on fire and 305 is closed. You and your family including three dogs are at home.
Scenario 3. A major snowstorm hits Kitsap. Falling trees and branches take down wires and block roads. Your elderly mother is in memory care several miles from you. She worries if she doesn’t hear from you every day. Plus, you were supposed to take her a medication refill today that she will need by this evening.
Potential Responses
Scenario 1. You and your family prepared for this scenario. You have a communication plan, which includes an out-of-state contact. Your kids have emergency kits in their school backpacks, and your spouse has one in a backpack at work. You have four agreed-upon meeting places (one outside your home, one in your neighborhood, one in Seattle, and one in Poulsbo). You completed the Bainbridge Prepares’ Child Emergency Reunification Plan, which includes a list of approved adults who can pick up your children. You have charged-up cell phones.
First, you and your spouse both text your out-of-state contact to say you are okay. The contact texts each of you back with the message. The roads are blocked with fallen trees and stopped cars. You post your Map Your Neighborhood Help sign on your front porch. Soon a neighbor comes to help. They help you get to the neighborhood meeting place. That’s where your neighbor Susan tells you she and her husband will walk to the schools and pick up your kids. You expect your spouse will be able to get home with the help of the Bainbridge Prepares’ Flotilla Team in about a week once the Coast Guard opens waterways again.
Scenario 2. You and your family have prepared for this scenario. You have downloaded the COBI emergency alert app and you know your Fire Zone. You get an alert from COBI ordering your Zone 7 to prepare to evacuate. A neighbor tells you that they were trying to head off the island, but the highway is completely blocked and the arterials are bumper to bumper cars so they returned home. You and your family walk a few blocks down to the shore, carrying your go bags, lifejackets, and two plastic kayaks. Once on the shore, you see that a person with a large sailboat is inviting the few people gathered there to climb aboard. They have room for your whole family and dogs. You leave your kayaks on the shore so someone else can use them.
Scenario 3. You and your family have prepared for this scenario. You try to text the memory care facility, but your cell phone is not connecting. You use your Satellite text-only device instead and are able to get a message to the facility to reassure your mother. Your Internet is working and you go online to contact the BIGWEELS Team to help you get the medication to your mother. They schedule a pickup from you in a few hours.
Final Thoughts
Thinking through scenarios is what professional emergency responders and managers do all the time. It’s the best way to envision potential problems so you can then come up with solutions. The more you do this, the less scary it becomes. That’s because you start to develop the confidence of being prepared. Will you be 100 percent ready for any possible scenario? No. Of course not. But every step you take toward that unattainable 100 percent goal will increase your family’s readiness and resilience.
A good exercise is to stop in the middle of whatever you are doing at random times and on random days. If a disaster were to happen right at that moment, what would your scenario be and how would you manage it? You can even make this a game you play with your family over text. Each person can text what they would do given the scenario you texted them.
