Personalized Emergency Plan
Why should you make an emergency plan?
To prepare the expected and be ready for the unexpected.
Preparing an emergency plan will give you a piece of mind and a little more insurance in crisis situation to keep calm and to do what you need to do. You will know how to start and, therefore, you will significantly reduce the risk of freezing in times when action is required.
You will know how to react and what to do, you will stay cool and, therefore, efficient in case of an emergency situation (even a minor one).
What should be in your emergency plan are guidelines for appropriate decisions and coordinated actions in order to communicate, regroup, evacuate, provide first aid, protect.
Because your family members might not be with you when a disaster strikes, it is important to inform and to involve them in the plan. You should also assign roles and tasks, so everybody knows what to do.
You can do that by discussing the following topics with your family:
- The basic do and don’t to ensure self-protection (in case of severe weather, earthquake, flood, pandemic, …).
- How to receive warnings and alerts, how to communicate with each other and reconnect if you are separated.
- How to organize your shelter in place, when you have to protect yourself from an outside element (like contaminated air), or when you have to stay at home during a pandemic (you should know this one by now).
- In what circumstances should you evacuate and how and where to regroup.
This is something you should discuss with the people you are living with but also with your neighbors.
You should build a plan taking into consideration the places where you are most of the time: at home, at work and commuting.
And because a disaster can strike when you are at your workplace or when kids are at school, you need to know their own emergency plans. How will they alert you, what will they do in case of evacuation or shelter in place? Children need to be aware of how these types of situations will be managed, for example who could pick them up in an emergency.
Your emergency plan will prepare you to face the crisis situation you have identified doing your assessment as discussed in my previous video. But going through this process you will also reinforce your skills and abilities to react each time you are facing an unexpected situation.
An elementary plan becomes very complicated in a crisis situation (the stress stress), so keep it simple to remember and to apply. Be sure that every person involved in your plan knows, understand and is able to execute it. Practice at least twice a year.
« No plan survives the enemy » as we say in the military, you can translate this into « no plan survives the unexpected » in an emergency situation. This is why you should have « what if » scenarios combined with alternate solutions within your plan.
Be prepared, be ready and you will feel more confident in times when so much seems out of control.
If you have questions, if you want a template for an emergency plan, email us at hello@projectspe.com
