I left my phone at home the other day. I didn’t get a good night sleep the night before, and was so groggy in the morning, I simply didn’t remember to take it with me. This happens once every few years. But instead of turning around to go back home and get it, I decided to make my first meeting on time and to see what it would be like navigating my day without constant email, text messages, phone calls, games, GPS, Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds… you get the picture.
What If…?
My first thought was “What if I need to call home?” Then I remembered I had a desk phone (:-0), and gave my wife a quick call. Win! Now she knows my office number. In the last decade or so, I guess she’s never needed to call it, since I always have my cell phone. Now she has a backup number for me, so that’s good. But it’s not the most interesting part.
I also thought “But what if it’s an emergency and I’m not at my desk?” Then I thought about our personal emergency communication plan, and realized that the only way it was going to get used is if we both have the same emergency at the same time, e.g. something catastrophic like an earthquake. I didn’t think to ask her to turn a radio on, set to monitor throughout the day. Our plan clearly needs more tweaking. Since my commute isn’t that long, it’s really not a big deal. And if you remember back in the <gasp> 20th century, there was a time when nobody had a cell phone, and somehow we survived… But that’s still not the most interesting part.
Oblivious
The most interesting part of my day was what I noticed about the people around me.
Stop looking at me.
I work at a high-tech company where most employees have smartphones, the kind that consume lots of data and have many, nifty apps, in addition to being used for work and personal email. Can you guess what it looks like on an elevator, walking between buildings, or in the cafeteria? The thing I noticed most is how many people were oblivious to the world around them because they were heads-down, focused on their phones! Even driving, when waiting at a light, I looked around more than before, and saw many drivers taking a break to surf the Internet or send a text message in the seconds between lights. Of course, it wasn’t everyone. But a lot of people were heads-down. Take a good look around, next time you’re in a crowd, or waiting at a light. What do you see?
How Aware Are You?
And I lied. While that was definitely interesting and got me thinking, it wasn’t the very most interesting part. The most interesting part was… you guessed it: all about me. I hadn’t noticed this before because my head was always buried in my phone! Fail. That’s what you call “inadequate situational awareness” or “condition white” for the more martial among you. If you leave your phone at home for a day and suddenly you notice some big, different things, you definitely weren’t paying enough attention before. Just like me. So don’t fail. Pay attention.
Set down your whiz-bang phone, tablet, iPod, or other gadget for a minute and look around. You may notice something you never noticed before.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that our local government upped the ante in their disaster prep recommendations! What appears to be a loose coalition of Emergency Management Offices here in Western Washington (“Make it Through” – see link below) is making more extensive recommendations than you’ll see at the federal level.
Good advice from FEMA, but you can do better!
No longer are they recommending the minimal three days of food, water, and other emergency supplies. They’ve more than doubled the recommendation to seven days (actually “seven to ten”). Good for them!
But that’s not all. They’ve altered the FEMA guidance of “Make a plan, build a kit, be informed.” And it’s a critical twist I wholeheartedly endorse. If you go to http://makeitthrough.org/, you’ll see this guidance:
Make a plan
Build a kit
Help each other(versus FEMA’s “be informed”)
Assuming that people will be informed anyway (if they have a radio in their kit and pay attention otherwise), helping each other is far more important.
New and improved advice!
In many disaster scenarios, most people won’t have access to the standard array of government emergency services, so we must assume that police, fire, medical and other services will not be available. So who will be available? Each other.
And how can you become more useful, or help others become more self-sufficient?
One great way is to run a “Map Your Neighborhood” program or something similar, depending on what resources are available in your area. (If you’re not sure how to do this, learn how here.) If you don’t know your neighbors, you should probably get out and say hello. This program is a great excuse to meet people you should already know (and will help you learn other important information…).
And you can’t go wrong by taking Red Cross First Aid and CPR classes, or better yet, one of their First Responder courses.
Back to the latest, greatest government guidance. As it turns out, unfortunately, their “Make a family emergency communication plan” is the typical “write down some phone numbers, including an out-of-area contact” advice. It’s not bad advice, but you can do far better with very little effort. Check out www.emergencycommunicationsblog.com for more details, or if you want the best communications-focused, disaster prep resource out there, get my book!On sale now at Amazon.com :-).
I’m happy to announce that my next book is now available! If you have family, friends or anyone else you care about and want to be prepared to weather the next power outage or even a natural disaster, Personal Emergency Communications is a must-read.
Personal Emergency Communications – get your copy now!
Written for the layman (no radio interest or expertise required!), I’ll walk you through the technology, the equipment you’ll need, and how you can make your own realistic, simple emergency communication plan, far more advanced and useful than the insufficient “have an out-of-area-contact” plan you’ve probably heard before.
I wrote this book for my friends and family, and for anyone who *isn’t* interested in radios at all, but who is interested in taking care of loved ones when the chips are down. Have you have ever wondered “What will I do if my cell phone, land-line phone, and the Internet don’t work?” or “How will I call [insert important people here] to know they’re safe?” Or do you only wonder now, since I asked the question? 🙂 In any case, this book is for you!
Here are comments from Ward Silver, author of “Two-Way Radios and Scanners for Dummies” and “Ham Radio for Dummies”:
This is a very useful book for someone interested in communicating in a disaster or emergency but who has little or no experience with using radio equipment… I like the book’s approach of “you can do this” and how it emphasizes thinking about what you want to accomplish, having several backup plans, and the need to practice. Andrew manages to explain the basics of different radio technologies while keeping a lot of the technical details from obscuring the basic points. To be sure…to get the most out of your radio and communicate effectively you’ll need to learn some of the technology but not all at once right at the beginning. The sections on personal prep and “go kits” is welcome and can’t be repeated enough. Going though his provided templates will help anyone think about planning and their personal circumstances which is a good thing – not enough people do it and are then unprepared. He provides on-line resources that will help the reader learn more about whatever technology they wind up deciding to use. This keeps the book from becoming an encyclopedia and makes it easy to read all the way through instead of getting sidetracked by details.
Give it a read and be much better prepared for an emergency.
Is sleeping part of your disaster plan? I’ll bet it’s not. Of course we can’t predict when we’ll be able to sleep in a life-or-death or otherwise high-stress situation. But we will all need to sleep eventually, so how will you ensure you’re able to get a minimum amount of rest?
Effects of Sleep Deprivation
We all know what happens if you don’t get enough sleep. At first, you get a little… stupid. You can’t do simple things as well as before. Your short-term memory starts to fail. You get clumsy and irritable. And you start making mistakes. Worst case, you make big mistakes. Long-term sleep deprivation is even worse, eventually resulting in mental breakdown and worse.
What do you think will happen after a day or two in a long-term emergency or disaster situation? Not only will you have a lot of additional problems to stress over, you will probably also have a compromised sleeping situation. Why? Maybe it’s because the rest of your family is not sleeping regularly, your home is damaged, you have unexpected guests, loud disturbances (sirens, gunfire, voices dogs barking) in your area, or any of the many other things that could make it difficult to sleep. And that’s not assuming you’re pulling a night watch shift because looters are busy in your neighborhood.
Sooner or later, you must sleep!
We can make one assumption safely, however. You must eventually sleep. If you don’t proactively decide when to sleep, you will fall asleep at the worst possible time, according to Murphy’s Law. This is one of the most troubling scenarios to the single person in an unsafe environment, so if that’s your scenario, you better find a place to hole up. But for most of us, we will have someone in the area we can trust to not plunder (or worse) while we sleep. And in that case, the goal will be at least a few (ideally several) hours of rejuvenating, uninterrupted unconsciousness.
Tips For Quality Sleep
Darkness will help. When I was in Army basic training, I was sleep-deprived like everyone else. One day on KP (Kitchen Patrol), things slowed down temporarily at the pots and pans station where I had been busy scrubbing bacon grease and other gunk off of large trays, and I took the opportunity to crawl under the sink, curl up and crash out for about an hour. It wasn’t as nice as a full night’s sleep, but it was better than nothing. And since I was so tired, I didn’t even notice that the bricks I lay on were hard, cold and damp, and that the pans getting cleaned in the stainless steel sink above me were clanging loudly. Darkness is all I needed at that point.
Another option that may help in your situation is a simple sleeping mask, especially if you’ve used one before and aren’t going to be distracted by something touching your eye area as you sleep. I remember many times after a 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM night shift, when I’d get home and put a large (and clean) sock over my eyes to help block out the light as I drifted away. A sleeping mask would have stayed on better.
A quiet environment will certainly help get you an extended chunk of sleep time. A surefire way to help with that: earplugs. I carry a pair in my backpack, so they’re around every time I travel. It’s not often I encounter unexpected, continuous noise, so that’s not my concern. But being able to shut out the world and sleep is a big deal. They’re small, inexpensive, and easy to find in bulk. Make sure you find a brand that fits comfortably, or you may wake up too early because they fell out, or because your ears are getting sore.
Along those lines, a cool environment will probably help too. Although it’s probably not likely you’ll have all of your common climate control options available in a real disaster, if you have the option to sleep in an environment that’s about 68 degrees F, you’ll probably sleep better than at 75 or 55 degrees.
Take some ibuprofen (Advil) or acetaminophen (Tylenol). Not the the “PM” kind (like Tylenol PM), which contain antihistamines (which can cause undesirable side effects, especially if used repeatedly). All the little aches and pains you picked up during the day will be relieved and allow you to rest more comfortably. They might not seem significant as you doze off, but they may prevent you from really relaxing for an extended time.
If You Want to Sleep, Avoid These:
Alcohol may help you feel drowsy, but after you process the alcohol, you will probably go through an alert phase, and unless you’re really drunk (which is not a good idea, because drunkenness and subsequent hangover are also not helpful in an emergency situation), you’ll probably wake up long before you get as much rest as you need.
As stated above, antihistamines like Tylenol PM, while they may cause drowsiness, aren’t a great approach. Other sleeping medications (unless prescribed) probably should be considered only as a last resort.
Caffeine (coffee, tea, soda, “NoDoz”, etc.) consumed within a couple hours of when you need to sleep will decrease your sleep quality, if you’re able to get to sleep at all. The same applies for nicotine in cigarettes, depending on how you’re addicted (since it relaxes at some times and stimulates at others).
What Can You Do Now, and What Can You Stock Up On?
Ensuring you are able to get to sleep after a disaster, short-term emergency, or even a stressful day is critical for your mental and physical well-being. Consider these options as part of your planning.
Be healthy and fit now. Healthy people who exercise regularly sleep better than those who don’t. Fitness is money in the bank.
Get enough sleep now, so you’re not in a deficit when the major stress hits. Get it while the going is good!
Buy some earplugs, a sleeping mask, and a bottle of ibuprofen or acetaminophen (which you should already have).
Test your sleeping mask and test your earplugs at night. See if you need to try something different. Don’t wait until you’re stressed out to test your plan.
If you’re concerned your bedroom may not be available when you need it, get a cot and try sleeping on it one night. If you don’t lose your bedroom, a guest who gets to use it will thank you profusely.
We all think about shelter, food, water, and other “basics” in a disaster preparedness context, but also make sure you give some thought to how you’ll maintain your sanity! You can thank me later. 🙂
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*NEW* Updated 5/20/2012
Updated, interactive personal emcomm plan template - enjoy!
I just added a Microsoft Word document for your use. It has interactive dropdowns and you can edit it directly on your computer. If you’ve been itching to make a pretty, typed-up plan, now you can! You can download it here: Updated Template – Word format (.docx format – requires Microsoft Word 2007 or newer). Please let me know what you think of it!
The PDF version is still available below. Next, I’ll get to work on an interactive PDF.
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This is the template I used at various conferences, walking through the Q&A and plan details with the audience. Using Personal Emergency Communications as your guide, you can fill this out yourself and save the cost of a conference and travel. 🙂
What is the most important aspect of disaster preparedness?
What is the easiest thing I can do to be better prepared for disaster?
What is the least expensive thing I can do to be better prepared for disaster?
These and other interesting practical prepping questions and answers await you below. Enjoy!
Dr. Bradley, if there was a single, simple preparedness message you wanted people to understand, what would it be?
My message would be to keep your preparations simple and effective. Avoid getting caught up in hype or paranoia. Start with a simple threat assessment, identifying the disasters that you are most worried about. This assessment might be drive by likelihood, severity, or special vulnerabilities. Once you have identified the threats that are of greatest concern, determined their impacts (e.g., food shortages, loss of electricity, lack of medical care, etc.). With the impacts clearly understood, it then becomes possible to take steps to mitigate their effect on your family. For example, if you’re worried about losing electrical power during a hurricane, then equipping your home with a backup system (such as a generator or battery/inverter system) would be near the top of your list of preparations. By working through this logical process of threat assessment, impact identification, and targeted preparations, you can effectively prepare your family for a wide range of disasters.
What inspired you to write your books?
One of the best disaster prep books currently available.
I’ve always been interested in disaster preparedness and wilderness survival. When I was a child, my father was a big survival advocate. I remember sitting around as a family studying maps of probable nuclear blast zones and discussing where we would retreat to. What really drove me to action, however, were the terrorist attacks of 9/11. As I watched the Twin Towers burn, I decided that my family was terribly underprepared for the kinds of dangers that we might face. This led down a long road of reading every book on the market, taking appropriate training, assessing my own family’s needs and preparations, and then taking concrete steps to get ready. It also motivated me to put my research together into a handbook that I hope others will find useful.
What is the most important aspect of disaster preparedness?
The most important aspect is to consider the needs of your entire family. Too many people forget about their family’s special needs, whether they are the needs of children, pets, an elderly parent, or someone with a medical condition. A disaster preparedness plan should be tailored to each family. A family with five kids that lives in rural Nebraska is very different than a retired couple living in a high rise apartment in downtown Los Angeles. There is no one right answer that fits everyone.
How can I explain to my wife, husband, parents, kids, or friends why disaster preparedness is important? What is the easiest way to give information to others without sounding crazy, “doom & gloom”, or paranoid?
I find that it’s easier than most people think to invite others to join the cause. The hard fact is that we all want to survive. When people see a viable threat, they pay attention. A clear, level-headed proposition to get better prepared is usually met with some understanding. Nearly all of us have been affected (or know someone affected) by widespread disasters. That often serves as a good jumping off point for forming a disaster preparedness network.
I personally think that there’s a movement underway in the US (and perhaps globally) to get better prepared. It’s likely due to the unprecedented number of disasters that occurred in 2011. Consider that in 2011, there was over 265 billion dollars worth of damages globally! Just within the US, there were nine disasters that caused at least 1 billion dollars of damage, not to mention the horrific loss of life from tornadoes.
What is the easiest thing I can do to be better prepared?
I tell people to start by storing 30 days of food and 14 days of water. Next would be to set up a backup heating system (if appropriate to the climate). These simple steps can help families get through many commonplace disasters.
What is the least expensive thing I can do to be better prepared?
Simply to start paying attention. My motto is Stay Alert = Stay Alive! Getting a weather radio is a good example of a paying closer attention to the threats around you.
What is the most importanttraining I can get for disaster preparedness?
I’d start with first aid training. Everyone should know life-saving first aid, whether it be how to stop bleeding, recognize the symptoms of a stroke, or administer CPR. CERT training, firearms instruction, and HAM radio licensing are also valuable.
Concerning disaster preparedness, what is our biggest cultural weakness in the US?
Like many parts of the world, we’ve grown fat, dumb, and happy. Many people are complacent and live under an imaginary umbrella of protection that our government provides. I feel that we need to return to our roots and recognize our own responsibility for our family’s safety. More grit, less handouts.
What is our biggest infrastructure weakness in the US?
Arguably, it’s the electrical power infrastructure. The electrical grid serves as the lifeblood for nearly every other infrastructure (i.e., food harvesting and distribution, water processing and distribution, banking, transportation, telecommunications, petroleum and natural gas, emergency services, and government). If it goes down, everything else quickly fails. By all accounts the power grid is old and prone to systemic failure. Consider the widespread and lasting effects of a long term failure – such as from an EMP attack or solar storm.
What’s your next book about?
As you know, I currently have two books out. The Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family is a comprehensive book that helps individuals and families understand the process of getting better prepared. The newest book that I have out is Disaster Preparedness for EMP Attacks and Solar Storms. As the title would imply, it hopes to address these two very important threats by analyzing the likelihood and ramifications of the events. It also outlines how individuals can prepare and protect themselves from these dangers. My next book will likely be an Advanced Prepper’s Manual, discussing more advanced topics when preparing for truly world-changing events.
Can you tell us a little more about yourself, a quick bio?
Dr. Arthur Bradley is an Army veteran, father of four, martial arts expert, and dedicated homeschooler. He is active in volunteer youth organizations, including the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. He holds a doctorate in engineering from Auburn University and currently works as a senior engineer for NASA. Having lived all across the United States, Dr. Bradley writes from personal experience about preparing for a wide variety of disasters, including earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, floods, house fires, and massive snowstorms. He prescribes to the philosophy that preparedness should always be motivated by love and concern, never by fear and paranoia. His practical approach to family preparedness has received widespread praise from individuals, emergency preparedness experts, and religious organizations.
Thanks for your time, and illuminating comments, Dr. Bradley!
Do you have the “recommended” three days of food and water set aside for an emergency or disaster? Is your plan to go to a government shelter after a disaster, even if you have your own shelter or your home is still habitable? If so, you should think again.
You can find recommendations on emergency food storage from the Red Cross, your local government, disaster preparedness gurus, and many others, and the recommendation looks like this: “Set aside three days of food and water in case of a disaster.”
Of course, it’s not difficult to put this much food aside, and it’s definitely not a bad thing to do. Many people already have more than three days of food in their cupboards and pantries (although the usual recommendation is to have this three days of emergency food set aside in a separate location, ideally in a box that’s easy to move, so that you can take it with you if you need to evacuate). Please note one more issue that is occasionally addressed: You can take that box of food and (since it’s portable) simply give it to someone else who needs it (e.g., an unprepared neighbor), assuming you have enough yourself.
But is three days of food and water for an emergency a realistic amount for you and your family? I can’t answer for you and your family, but I’ll give you the answer for me and mine: “No!” Why do I think three days of reserve food and water insufficient? When I’ve heard this recommendation in the past, the logic behind it (which I only recently heard called out explicitly) is that three days of food will give you enough buffer to get by until you are able to get to a government shelter. What is your plan in a serious emergency or natural disaster? Do you not have a plan? Uh oh! Let’s back-track for just a moment. While this article isn’t about creating a full disaster plan, let’s look quickly at the angle. If nothing else, ask yourself these questions:
If the power goes out for over a week (since power outage is the result of most disasters, e.g. earthquake, hurricane, nuclear reactor meltdown, regional flooding, tornado, etc.), what will you [and family, friends, as applicable] do? Is your goal to go stay at home (assuming it’s habitable) or is your plan to go to a government shelter? By the way, if you don’t have a plan for more than a couple days of food and water, your default plan is to have the government take care of you!
If your local gov’t is your plan, let’s ask one more question: Are you confident that within three days, your local government will have a clean, safe, stocked shelter ready for you and your family (but not pets – not allowed) to move into? Once you’ve given at least a moment’s thought, let’s focus more on self-sufficiency and ask the next question…
How long do you want to be able to comfortably eat and drink (more on water storage in a separate article) if you can’t leave your home?
Mountain House is a high-quality, easy-to-prepare and tasty option for bulk, freeze-dried food storage.
Three days is a minimum, and of course you should have that ready to use or give away. But let’s look at some better, convenient options. Quickly, let’s review the types of food you can store. Of course, fresh food isn’t an option for a power-out situation, unless it’s coming from a local farm or garden.
Bagged/boxed food: it can often last up to a year or more, and needs to be regularly rotated into your everyday food stores.
Canned food: it can also last a year or more, and needs to be rotated in order to prevent needing to throw away expired food each year.
Dehydrated food: Dehydrated fruits & some other products can last up to a few years.
Freeze-dried food: This is my favorite option, though more expensive than the next option. You can get canned or bagged freeze-dried food that will last 20-30 years, and if you prefer, you can get meals that only need to add water, vs. raw ingredients (next option), which will require more preparation.
Raw foods: Wheat, rice, beans, corn, and other grains are easy and relatively inexpensive to store in cans or larger containers, and they can last 20-30 years, and in some cases longer. Preparation is more labor-intensive (e.g. grinding wheat), resource-intensive (e.g. baking bread), and time-consuming (e.g, soaking beans overnight vs. simply adding water to freeze-dried food).
The easy way to set aside one, two, or three weeks (which should be the minimum, in my opinion) worth of food is to regularly set aside a small amount of canned and boxed food (even if it’s just one can or box), every time you come back from the grocery store. If you don’t have a big budget to set aside food right now, this approach allows you to gradually grow your emergency food supply, maybe only an extra day of reserve at a time (or even less), until you reach your goal.
Wise brand has some great advantages: the portions are individually-wrapped (whereas an opened can may go stale/bad if not used soon), and the storage is quite compact. There are 84 servings in this bucket, with 10 different types of entrees and break fast options. This single bucket may be your (individual) 28-day backup food supply. It's that simple!
Another way, if you have a little more cash set aside, is to buy free-dried. In my opinion, this is the easiest option for long-term, “buy-and-forget” emergency food storage. You can buy a one-week, one-month, or even one-year (if you have the $, space, and that much concern) supply, store it and be done with it for the next 20-25 years. That is convenient! Freeze-dried food is my favorite option for those reasons:
Long term storage: Canned, freeze-dried food is usually good for 25 years, sometimes longer.
Easy to prepare: All you need to do is add hot water (or even cold water if you want to wait longer for it to reconstitute), wait a couple minutes and eat a prepared entree (e.g., spaghetti and meat sauce, beef Stroganoff, chicken teriyaki).
Easy to organize: Take your bucket or box of #10 cans and stick them on a dry shelf. Mark the date on them and come back every couple years to make sure they haven’t been damaged. No rotating necessary. If you store canned/boxed food, you’ll need to rotate (still not a big deal). And if you store canned, raw ingredients, you’ll need to make sure you’re storing enough of the components to make a meal later. E.g., a ton of wheat will go a long way, but you’ll be sick (figuratively and possibly literally, depending on your innards) of eating hot wheat berries for breakfast and bread for lunch after about one day. You’ll need a wider variety of ingredients.
A downside, at least at first glance, is price. However, give it a little thought anyway. Storing a significant quantity of freeze-dried will probably look quite a bit more expensive at first glance, but when you compare to a can or bucket of wheat, rice, beans, spices, etc. and factor in the cooking time and facilities necessary to make them edible, the additional water and other ingredients you’ll need to consider, weight (if you ever need to move your food), etc., the option that seems less expensive now may feel much more expensive later when you need to use those supplies.
Note: Canned freeze-dried food will last far longer than mylar pouches by themselves (with the exception of the Wise foods mylar bags that are sealed again inside a plastic bucket). The Mountain House, Alpine Air, or other brand mylar-bag-packed food you can buy at your local sporting goods store usually lasts five to seven years, whereas the same meal in a #10 can (the usual size, typically Mountain House brand, but there are others) will usually last 20-25 years.
Of course, three days of food is a nice start, but regardless of how you want to store emergency food, consider at least three weeks. It’s easy!
If you haven’t read my first article on Setting up and Running a Map Your Neighborhood Program, you should read it first, here.
The quick version: the Map Your Neighborhood is a program designed to help neighborhoods prepare for disasters, with a specific curriculum and workshop materials. I tracked down and reviewed materials, invited neighbors, offered dessert, and…
After all of the preparing I did, the program went just fine. Most neighbors showed up on time, and some even brought their own chairs (as I had requested). And even though we had prepared pie and ice cream for everyone, people brought more desserts anyway! We had a lot left over, and nobody left hungry. How can you go wrong with extra dessert?
Map Your Neighborhood participant handout and American Red Cross preparedness materials
We walked through the Map Your Neighborhood standard content, which was quick and easy, and had a little bit of Q&A along the way. We briefly walked through additional Red Cross content I had brought. I demonstrated a water and gas shutoff wrench, showed some food storage options, showed a water can when talking about water storage, etc. I also mentioned some of the content in the CERT class I was taking at the time. Unsurprisingly, there was some significant overlap. And given my background, I probably spent a little extra time on emergency communications. You can expect an article later if I am able to set up the emergency communication plan I have in mind for the neighborhood. 🙂
What went well?
One neighbor brought their three teenagers, and they were all engaged. Wow! I didn’t expect any young folks to be interested, but I’ll take it.
Everyone cared about the content, and had good questions.
Everyone followed up with my request for additional contact info, so that I was able to prepare a useful map.
Everyone said “OK” when I asked (and you must ask) if I could share our contact information
We finished quickly, less than two hours. If I recall correctly, we were done in about 1.5 hours, which is very quick for all of this content.
What could have gone better? We had a couple of false starts as people trickled in, but I guess that is to be expected. Also, I didn’t use the training DVD. Why not? Personally, I thought the program went much quicker without it, and not taking a lot of time was one of my goals. I wouldn’t recommend that for everyone, however. One of the benefits of the DVD is that the training is standardized — everyone sees the same material.
Also, two neighbors couldn’t make it, and I could have tried to reschedule again, but I was getting tired of trying to pin down a date that would have worked for everyone. I did drop off the materials with both neighbors afterward, and they did provide me with contact info for our map (see below), so that ended up OK.
About a week later (it should not have taken that long, but I was busy!), I sent out the map, which I put together as a PDF. It looks something like the picture below.
You’ll note that I asked for certain key pieces of information:
Names of everyone living in the residence, even if part-time
Names and types of pets
Land-line and cell phone numbers for everyone
Email addresses for everyone
What I didn’t ask for: Emergency contact number, especially out of area. I’ve been thinking about this and think it’s a good idea, although I’m a little concerned that people might find the request invasive. Maybe I’ll ask what people think when we all get together next.
Sample Map Your Neighborhood map
You can see how it turned out. It looks a lot like the sample I made, which you can see to your right. Here’s how you can make your own map:
Go to Bing or Google maps, find your location, and zoom in as far as you can.
Use the “Snipping Tool” (in Windows, or whatever for Mac/Linux) to capture the view you prefer
Copy it
Paste it into your desktop publishing application. I used Microsoft Publisher.
Add text boxes with contact info, and lines that point to houses
Save as PDF and send out to your neighbors (but you’re not done yet!)
Get corrections (guaranteed to be a few), make changes, and send out again
Follow up by handing out paper printouts to each neighbor (they may not have a printer or may forget to print it out)
What I didn’t put on the map: Resources, like chainsaws or generators. It seemed like it would be more work and I was running out of room on our map, although I do have notes from the meeting. The good news is that we neighbors all know each other well enough now, and the group is small enough that I think we would all be relatively comfortable asking for help from the guy who’s good at plumbing, construction, first aid, etc.
What’s next? We had a neighbor move away just a couple weeks ago. When that house is occupied again, I’ll introduce myself, try to get a read on the new neighbors, see if they’re interested in reading some disaster preparedness materials, and when it feels comfortable, I’ll ask them for some contact info. If the other neighbors are sufficiently comfortable with the new neighbors (or trust my judgment), we can share all of our contact info. I won’t give anyone’s contact info to anyone else without permission.
Another thing I’d like to do when the weather is better is to have a simple “block party” type of gathering – a pot-luck or barbecue or whatever. Even though we’re neighbors and even though we’ve met each other, had conversations, and even shared some stories, there is still a lot of opportunity to get to know each other better and ideally increase our mutual trust and comfort level. This is what I think will make the biggest difference in a pinch.
I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions or comments, please post below!
Aside from your brain, one of the key every-day carry tools is the popular folding knife. Most of us can use one effectively to open boxes and bags of chips, but how can you use a knife for self-defense purposes? Take a course like “Defensive Folding Knife” – then you’ll know.
Do you carry a folding knife? Have you thought about carrying a folding knife but just aren’t ready yet? And why do/would you carry one?
If your reasoning includes self-defense, in a very bad situation, keep reading, because I learned some things you should know too, at the Defensive Folding Knife course at Insights Training in Bellevue, WA.
A few basics for those of you who aren’t sure about why you’d carry a defensive knife (credit to Ralph Mroz for his article in Tactical Knives magazine) in the first place:
Anyone can use one, old or young, fat or skinny, weak or strong, man or woman
A knife is easy to use very quickly
A knife is very easy to carry – pocket, waistband, etc. (more on that below)
A knife is legal to carry almost everywhere (research your local laws before you carry!)
Depending on where you live, it may not be legal to carry a gun, and for you a knife may be the next best thing
If you travel, a knife is relatively convenient, and legal in many more places, especially internationally (do even more research here – some countries carry stiff penalties for silly things)
As you read further, you’ll learn even more about why a knife can be very handy in a pinch.
Let’s start with a couple things: 1) Why I took the course and 2) Who are these Insights folks?
I took this course for a couple reasons. I took a similar course previously several years ago, from Eric Remmen. It was good stuff. When I saw one of the InSights Training Center flyers at the local gun store, it looked like similar curriculum, already knowing that their training would be very high quality, I decided to give it a go. That’s one reason – because I like to learn, am interested in self-defense stuff, and I knew this instruction would be good. How good? Here are the bios for a couple of their instructors:
Greg M. Hamilton, Chief Instructor: “Greg is the Founder and Chief Instructor for InSights. He is internationally recognized as one of the best firearms and tactics instructors in the world. He is a veteran of the US Army Rangers and Special Forces, and is certified by the Army as a Close Quarters Combat Instructor and Anti-Terrorism Instructor.” And two more paragraphs with more details…
John Holschen: “John Holschen is a frequent guest instructor with InSights. John served for over 20 years in the Special Operations and Intelligence branches of the U.S. Army. He is a former US Army Special Forces Weapons Sergeant and Special Forces Medic. John taught at the JFK Special Warfare School and was the Senior Hand to Hand Combat Instructor/Master Instructor for 1st Special Forces Group.” And two more paragraphs with more details…
They are bona fide bad-asses, and at the same time, easy-going (at least with this civilian crowd), excellent teachers. How could I help but learn a lot?
The other reason for taking the course is that I often carry a folding knife, and use it to open boxes, bags, bubble-packed stuff, and the hundred other things that seem to come up regularly when you have such a tool available. The techniques used to open & cut stuff in this context are relatively easy to acquire intuitively. However, when it comes to using a knife for self-defense purposes, critical behaviors and actions are not so intuitive for many (even for some martial artists, who are taught some wacky concepts sometimes). I thought I had a good foundation with what I learned in my previous course, but wanted to be a little more sure, since I would be relying on this training to potentially save my life or the life of a loved one. I wanted to be able to use this tool to protect myself, at least somewhat effectively.
So I showed up at about 8:00 A.M., ready to go, wondering what I’d find. You may be a a little surprised. While there were a few more men than women, the class was not full of ex-military, muscle-bound, buzz-cut-sporting, tough guys itching to fight, but “regular folks”, from the overweight woman in her late 60’s and her 30-something daughter to the couple in their 20’s who wanted to take better care of each other. And my wife. I dragged her along. She loves to learn too, and is generally a real trouper when it comes to indulging me. (Thanks Baby.) Essentially, it was a little cross-section of society. I wondered how they would be able to tailor their curriculum to fit this group, most of whom were not “fighting-fit”.
One of the wonderful things I learned about a simple folding knife in a life-or-death, self-defense scenario is that it can be used very effectively by weak and strong, tall and short, young and old, with devastating effects. And Insights set up the class so that anyone could take it. Kudos to whoever owns the training plan – it seemed to work well for everyone. Their fitness level didn’t matter much.
Let’s talk about what we learned. I’m not going to give you a minute-by-minute description, even though the course was sufficiently content-packed to do that. You’ll need to take the course yourself to get that level of content (and I recommend the course to anyone interested in taking care of him-/herself). We covered the following topics (and other stuff I don’t have room to include):
When to use deadly force
Color codes of awareness
Mental conditioning
Techniques/Skills
Equipment
You’ll notice something that our instructors didn’t actually call out in the class (that I recall). The listing above is generally covered in order of importance, from most to least important. For those of you who think having the super-cool knife is all you need to defend yourself in a life-or-death situation, you are dead wrong. You should know when it makes sense to use a knife, practically and legally, what your mindset should be, how you can avoid a dangerous situation and using a knife altogether, the basics of how to use the knife in a variety of situations, and lastly, some good knife options. All of the information leading up to which knife you want is much more important.
Again, this material will NOT replace taking this course or a similar course. THIS ARTICLE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, and anything you decide to do with this information is at your own risk. Consult your doctor, lawyer, local law enforcement, law-books, etc. before you do anything with a knife where you live.
Let’s go over some things I learned.
1. When to use deadly force in self-defense
As I referenced above, you must know the laws in your city, state, province, and/or country. And aside from what your local laws allow, what’s covered in this course is only defensive in nature. Do your research – your and your family’s well-being (at least) could depend on it. You can’t defend your loved ones if you are in prison, and your opinion of what’s right and wrong may not matter to your local lawmakers, law enforcement & judges. According to many laws, the following conditions must exist before you can use deadly force (which you should also learn in any self-defense-related shooting course):
Ability – the attacker must be able to use deadly force against you (or someone else – the same applies to “you” below).
Opportunity – the attacker must have the opportunity to carry out the attack.
Jeopardy – the first two aren’t enough. The attacker must use the opportunity and ability to actually put your life in danger by doing something.
Preclusion – Bonus points! While this is not a legal requirement in most states, it may be a good idea nonetheless (and while you’re busy “precluding”, you may have extra time to call 911 and let the police show up. They get paid to risk their lives for stuff like this, and you can avoid the liability and probable civil lawsuit hassles). Essentially, it means that you try every other option to get out of that situation.
2. Color codes of awareness
Most firearms courses out there teach these color codes, or one of the few variations on them. Here is the quick version.
White: unaware – you should only be here when you are asleep
Yellow: relaxed and alert – you are aware of your surroundings
Orange: you are alert to a specific danger or potential danger
Red: a fight is imminent – you are in danger and ready to deal with it
Black: you are fighting – retreat is not an option, you are in danger and actively dealing with it
We spent a solid chunk of time on this material – what you see above is only a basic outline. Go learn this material and the accompanying scenarios from a pro.
3. Mental conditioning for self-defense
This was the most fascinating part of the course for me, and that’s saying a lot, because the whole course was fascinating! The instructor obviously knew what he was talking about, and the amount of information he had to offer made me feel like I was drinking from a fire-hose. This was all about psychology. But not the psychology you’d get from your textbook in Psych 101. Instead, this was the psychology of behavior on the street, in a bar, wherever you put alphas and betas. We discussed submissive vs. aggressive behavior, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), verbal and non-verbal communication. Here are some key pieces of info I remember. (And there was a lot more content we covered that I’m not going into. This part of the course was well worth the entire cost.)
If you look like food, you should expect to get eaten.
Aggressive/dominant behavior can often attract other aggressive/dominant behavior (which is presumably not desired). In other words, you need to be the gray man.
Do you want to change your mental state? Raise your chin one inch. You just became more assertive and at least slightly changed your attitude. Oh yeah.
Let go of your big, fat ego. If someone cuts you off, let them go ahead of you and be on their crazy way. If you make a mistake, admit it and apologize sincerely. If someone flips you off, don’t do it back – pretend you never saw it. Allow their ego to stay intact. This type of an approach will help you avoid all kinds of hassles in the first place!
And much, much more…
4. Techniques
We started with drawing and deploying from the front pocket or concealment (I describe my personal preference below), learning how to do it quickly and under stress. Then we did about 100 other things. We were busy, and did wreaked some real havoc with our training knives.
I won’t attempt to describe what grip to take, where you should target, how to cut, or the variety of techniques you can use for knife retention, escape from grabs, chokes, locks, holds, how to use a knife when ground-fighting or how to integrate knife and handgun. Not only am I not qualified, but reading won’t matter. Doing will.
I will say one more thing about technique: If you’re wondering what it’s like using your knife on something made of real meat – you’ll get to experience that too. (No people or animals were harmed during this course :-).)
5. Equipment – Folding Knife Considerations
Spyderco Delica - Simple and Effective
This is the fun part for many folks, especially the gear-heads and people who use the words “everyday carry” :-). I said it before and I’ll say it again: the knowledge is more important than the gear. You need to get out of your recliner and go get the knowledge and hands-on, what-it-feels-like training. But of course, the gear angle is still fun.
The quick version: Get a Spyderco Delica or two. Why? A few reasons:
1) The quality is high. The steel is good, the grip is easy to hold, and the ergonomics are great for most hands.
2) A Delica is easy to retrieve and open – that hole in the blade is patented for a reason. They made it very easy to open quickly with one hand, with no extra springs or gadgets – simply functional.
3) The blade length is appropriate, and the blade length (approx. 2 7/8”) is legal in most areas (do your research).
4) It is lightweight and slim – will not weigh down one side of your body, pull down your running shorts when you run, or cause unusual bulges. The slim clip is sturdy and positioned in the right place on the handle to make it easy to conceal. In addition, the clip is reversible two ways – top or bottom, and left or right side, which makes it easy to carry any way you chose, whether your right- or left-handed (see #2).
5) They are not very expensive as compared to many high-quality folders: $50-$60. You won’t have to give up meat for a month to afford it. If you lose it, you won’t be crying for a week.
6) And if you care, you can get a variety of colors and steels (e.g. blue or green with ZDP-189), versus the plain black body with VG-10 steel. Of course, the fancier versions cost more. I got one with a medium blue handle, which matches the color of most of my jeans. Not because I care about the color of my socks matching my shirt, but because I want it to not be very visible. There’s a difference!
Of course, you may prefer another brand or style, which is fine. If you can conceal and retrieve it effectively, the blade is legal, it can be opened under stress with one hand, and you can afford it, you’re set! There are many great, solid folders out there from Benchmade, SOG, Kershaw, Gerber, and Emerson, just to name a few. And Spyderco makes many other folding knife variations.
Gray man tip:
This is something they didn’t teach in class, that I have personally found to be convenient. I carry my pocket-knife* in my waistband. Why? It isn’t easy to see by everyone and their brother. I can go to work, out for a jog, to the grocery store, or wherever, without identifying myself as “the guy with the knife in his pocket.” You know who they are (if you notice it once, you’ll always notice it), and may be one of those people yourself. The clip is easy to see on the front of someone’s pocket. And much of the time, that may be perfectly appropriate for you. But I prefer to keep it low-key.
Here’s another reason. Often you can use that visible knife clip that’s on the front of someone’s pocket as an indicator to look a little further, for the accompanying bulge of a concealed handgun. Gun guys are also often knife guys. Am I wrong? Please send me an email and let me know what you think. 🙂
Note: If you have a big belly, keeping a knife on your waistband will probably not work for you.
*Did you notice the non-tacti-cool, unobtrusive, tool-focused words I used? It is just a tool after all, not a “combat-folder” or “zombie-stopper” or any kind of “dangerous weapon”. It’s just a tool. Along those lines, here’s another tip (from class): if you’re out in public and need to open a bag or box or delicately slice off a piece of Camembert to go with your crackers, consider slowly retrieving your knife, opening it slowly with two hands, versus going for the speed-draw and seeing whose attention you can draw with the sudden “snick” of the shiny blade locking open. Gray.
Summary
There you go – this was the very quick version, which will certainly not be sufficient for you to adequately defend yourself with a folding knife, but will give you an idea of what you should be able to do with one, if you can find good training in your area.
If you live in or travel to the Pacific Northwest, I highly recommend InSights Training Center. I’ve taken a few classes from them, and they’ve been top quality. Their website is here: http://www.insightstraining.com/
It’s hard to go wrong with a folding knife as part of your everyday carry, because these tools are so versatile. If you want to have your knife realistically available as a self-defense tool also, please get some training.
How to Set Up and Run a Map Your Neighborhood Program Where You Live
I decided to run this program in my neighborhood, and decided to provide you with my personal experience and resources that will make it easier for you to do it too! But what is it? Why do it? Keep reading.
What is it? “Map Your Neighborhood” is a program designed to help neighborhoods prepare for disasters. With it you can increase your odds of survival in a disaster. It covers these topics and more:
The 9 steps you should take immediately following a disaster
How to identify skills and equipment available in the neighborhood
How to create a neighborhood map
What should be in your contact list
How your and your neighbors can start working together as a team! (If nothing else, you’ll know who you can go to for help, versus who will probably need help.)
Why do it? As you can see in one of my first CERT classes, the question is raised – “What can I do about helping my neighbors?” And I add the second part of the question – “So that they can take care of themselves versus relying on my resources?” In addition, you may have neighbors with special needs, and these should certainly be identified before an emergency.
Here are the steps I followed to Map My Neighborhood:
Find materials
Check for general interest with neighbors
Send out invitations (invited in person and with paper taped to doors)
Prepare some examples of kits, etc.
Get dessert ready (added incentive for those who need a little more motivation :-))
Make a map to hand out
Get some additional materials from my local American Red Cross
Finding the educational materials wasn’t as simple as I thought it should be. I had to look around for a couple weeks to find what I needed. Although some resources were available online for download, there was no clear description of what specific resources were actually needed to do the training. And when I did eventually determine what materials were needed (it took a couple phone calls), I wasn’t able to find them in one place.
How did I do it? We don’t have this program in my city, so I didn’t have a local contact. I tried the county emergency management office, and found nothing. I tried the state, and they put a DVD in the email for me, along with one sample handout. At the time, I didn’t ask for more copies, although I probably could have.
And then, since I was taking a CERT course in a neighboring city (since my city also doesn’t do CERT :-(), I asked about finding the Map Your Neighborhood student handouts and found some. You may need to be creative, and don’t hesitate to check with neighboring emergency management offices! People in these roles are usually (and certainly should always be) very helpful and generous with educational resources.
Here are the materials you need to run the Map Your Neighborhood program:
Attendee/Student handouts: I had to get these locally from a neighboring city’s emergency management office, since my city’s office couldn’t help for whatever reason.
Training DVD: I had to get this from the state emergency management office. I may have been able to get a copy locally, but I didn’t know who to ask at the time. This will give some useful tips, but as you will be able to see later, I didn’t use it directly in my presentation. I probably broke the rules there, so don’t tell anyone.
Instructor discussion guide/manual: I downloaded the discussion guide here: http://www.emd.wa.gov/myn/documents/myn_discussion_guide.PDF. (Thanks to Washington State Military Department Emergency Management Division for making this available!
Anything else you want to give out: I found good handouts from my regional American Red Cross on disaster preparedness and more. I suggest you go to your local chapter and ask for some materials to give y our neighbors. You’ll probably walk away with your hands full.
Map Your Neighborhood handout (center) and Red Cross handouts
I reviewed the video, handouts, and teacher’s guide ahead-of-time. The good news – I learned a couple things. That’s the great thing about teaching/guiding a group – it’ll force you to learn things yourself!
Now that I knew the basic curriculum, I knew how to summarize with neighbors over the next week. Whenever I saw one of them, I mentioned “Expect an invitation taped to your door soon, for the disaster preparedness program we’ll be running at our house. It won’t take long and you’ll learn something!” I also tried to get a feel for when they would be available, so that I could propose a time/date that would get the best attendance.
One of the neighbors was clearly interested in what it was about, so I gave a few more details. Aside from wanting to help him out with the information, I wanted to gauge his reaction, so I’d have a better idea how other neighbors would react. He was quite interested, and also didn’t know how to do some of the things we discuss, e.g., turn off his natural gas line. Just the type of student I’m looking forward to working with!
Later that week, I finished drafting and printed out a “Howdy Neighbors” letter, and handed it to the neighbors in person in the evening, or taped it to the door of the couple that weren’t home.
I got a variety of responses:
“Great, looking forward to it.”
“Thanks, this is a good thing you’re doing”, and shook my hand. He appeared to be very interested. Later I learned otherwise (see Part 2.)
“Yeah, OK”, and shut the door quickly. Maybe I was interrupting dinner…
“Great.” Short and sweet. I knew this guy was already well-prepared.
I had a few concerns at this point. Could I get them to show up? Can I fit them in our living room? Can I keep them comfortable? Will they find the material interesting? Will they ask a bunch of questions I don’t have answers to? And worst of all, by doing this, would they now view me as their “disaster plan” for an emergency, instead of preparing for themselves?
Do you want a template to use for your neighborhood? Free for my readers – you can use this one or modify it as you see fit: download doc here. Simplly fill in the [bracketed] areas and you your own, personalized letter, ready to go.
To see how the meeting went, read Part 2! (coming soon :-))
This is it! Our final exercise! (Note: In order to not ruin the fun for the next CERT classes that happen, I won’t give away the good stuff, so thosee folks can learn from their mistakes too! :-))
It was a cool and not rainy (yes!) Saturday morning, and I could feel the excitement in the air as I walked up to the group of classmates who were milling around, waiting for things to get rolling. I signed in with the instructors and waited to get rolling. It didn’t take long.
We had selected an Incident Commander (our “IC” – do you remember ICS from Day 2?) in our last class session, and she was ready to go. After we arrived for the exercise, we all chose teams (search, rescue, medical, runners, etc.) and were ready to go. One of the instructors told us “We just had an earthquake”, and the drill was on!
And then things really slowed down. Me and another guy were tasked with examining the outside of the building that we were using for our scenario, and that took a few minutes. We saw nothing significant. Apparently the instructors didn’t think it was important to heighten the realism by starting a couple fires, taking a sledgehammer to the gas line, or breaking out the windows. Oh well – maybe when the read this article they’ll do that for the next class. (And the gas company could to their own “fix the vandalized gas line” drill at the same time :-)).
After that, we knew that the building appeared to be structurally safe on the outside, and other teams of searchers made their way inside. And the slowness continued. Since I was in and out and helping search and doing other chores, I obviously didn’t see everything that was going on, and certainly wasn’t able to view things from the IC’s or instructors’ perspective, but I didn’t need to see everything to realize a few things as the scenario progressed:
Injured people had to wait a long time to get treatment, even when injuries were life-threatening.
People who could have lived “died” instead because we took too long to get to them.
It was difficult to maintain communications to and from the IC, even when using runners (and since our class was pretty big, it was even harder!)
Orders changed midstream, either because of rumors spread when connecting with other search or rescue teams, and in many cases because people on teams simply decided to do something else after they got started doing one thing. It turned out to be very easy to get distracted by crying victims, a fire or chemical spill (or in our case, signs that indicated these situations), and many other things.
This was what they call a “dynamic” environment, not because the quake was still happening or because pieces of the building were still falling down, but because we had introduced a whole new batch of humans to the overall equation, and all of us rescuers kept changing things.
The IC had a tough job! Not only did she only have runners for communication, she needed to keep track of who was where, whether all her teams were safe, and had to do her best as victims kept dying off.
I’m not pointing this stuff to point blame to anyone — our class did a great job! But instead I want to point out that in an environment like this, it will be confusing, and that confusion could potentially result in additional pain and suffering. Such is the nature of a natural disaster. Now you won’t be surprised. (I know – if you’re reading this type of article in the first place, such a statement is unlikely to be a surprise!)
Here’s another interesting thing I noticed. I died! That’s right. I broke one of the simple rules: “Never get separated from your buddy”. Easy, right? Not in this case. We were a three-person team, and we had stopped to rescue an injured girl. After a little hemming and hawing, I decided that I could easily carry her in my arms, downstairs to safety and treatment. We talked about what the other two should do. I looked away for a moment, saying something about us needing to stay together, and before I knew it, they were off on their own. I headed toward safety anyhow. (At that point, I think the only alternative that would have kept me from breaking the rules would have been to drop the victim and catch up with them. That seemed silly, so I didn’t. My mistake. An observer looked at me and said “You have no buddy – you just died.” The fact that this observer also seemed to be encouraging us to split up right before my two buddies took off didn’t help anything. Maybe he was playing devil’s advocate – I’m not sure. And it doesn’t matter. The rule was simple, I broke it, and I was dead. (It was only a 15-minute “time-out” and then I got to play some more, but the lesson was still quite clear.)
Use the buddy system, like the Army Rangers do!
What does this prove? Even in this contrived situation, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to realize that in the midst of bad things, more bad things can continue to happen! Did you read about search and rescue from Day 7? Can you imagine listening to someone crying for help inside a collapsed building, but knowing that if you went in you could possibly cause further collapse (injuring your victim further or killing him/her) or make matters even worse by injuring or killing yourself? This was the type of situation our instructors were trying to avoid. If you have your buddy with you, you’re likely to live longer when your environment is in turmoil. Elite military units do it for the same reason, and we should too. Have you ever heard of a Ranger Buddy? Go to Army Ranger School, and you’ll learn about it (or just keep reading this article – much easier). At Ranger school, you and your buddy are inseparable, and watch each other’s backs. And if you do get separated somehow, you can expect at leat lots of pushups and some yelling. (No, I was not a Ranger, but I was in the Army, and have this on good authority :-).)
A situation like this disaster scenario is HARD to deal with. The class did a great job, especially for our first drill. The biggest lesson I learned is that in order to not make a worse disaster of an existing disaster, I and the rest of my CERT team will need practice!
The good news is that we have another drill coming up early next year, and I’m looking forward to correcting some of my own mistakes and hopefully adding value to the rest of the group.
Let me sum up this experience (at least for now – I’ll probably write about upcoming drills too) by saying this:
Taking a CERT class is good, but it’s only a very basic preparation for a disaster.
Participating in additional drills will help cement your training (if I wrote clearly, this is obvious to you already). If you don’t exercise these muscles, they’ll waste away. Don’t let all that time you invested in training go to waste!
If you haven’t taken a CERT course, do it. It won’t hurt. It will help.
This was our last class in the classroom, and it was a pretty good one. Of all the classes, I like this one best because I could re-learn or practice many of the most important things from all of hte previous classes, in preparation for our upcoming “field exercise”.
We had a few stations to rotate through, including head-to-toe assessment and bandaging/splinting. We also had a “rapid triage” station, at which we had 10-15 seconds to pick up a card, read the condition of a victim, and write down our assessment (green, yellow, red, black). It wasn’t easy! But it was a great way to review quickly, and we went throught the scenarios quickly as a class afterwards.
Additionally, we reviewed a lot of the highlights from previous classes in a big slide deck, along with some new, supporting material. Let me take this opportunity to say again that our instructors did a fantastic job making sure we had useful, interesting content to review.
Especially to prepare for our upcoming exercise, we spent some more time on reviewing building layouts and discussing how we would conduct search and rescue operations in a variety of situations.
Of course, none of this could have prepared us for the mind-bending insanity that was our Final Exercise. Not many survived that day, unfortunately….
The “rules” for light search and rescue, for example, trying to help people who may be trapped in a building after an earthquake (or anything else that could knock a building down) are as follows:
1) Be safe!
2) Do the greatest good for the most people, vs. dedicating all of your resources to solving one problem of many
Of course, before you run willy-nilly into a building to rescue someone, you need to determine whether you will die if you do that :-|. You must evaluate the scene and see how dangerous it is. One of the first things to do is to look at the damage. If it’s light or medium damange, you may consider entering, searching, and rescuing as needed. If the damage is heavy, don’t go it.
Earthquake-damaged basement - would you go in?
“Don’t go in and rescue the crying person? That’s terrible!” Yes it is. But it’s not as terrible as you going inside and possibly:
1) Causing the building to collapse further, making the situation worse for the trapped person or
2) Getting trapped yourself, making the situation worse for everyone else you could otherwise be helping, as well as for yourself!
What do you do when you encounter heavy damage and someone making noise inside? You say “I can’t come in. It’s too dangerous. We’ll send in someone with the right training as soon as we possibly can.” Those are the unfortunate, frustrating words you’ll get to shout to some poor soul who wants out.
In addition to learning more about damage and search techniques, we learned a bit about cribbing. What is cribbing? If you look up the noun, it’s defined as a temporary wooden structure used to support heavy objects during construction, search and rescue, etc.
We also used it as a verb: to build up those wooden supports while levering something heavy off of a victim. This comes in handy when you have a piece of wall or bookshelf or whatever pinning a victim down, and some other pieces of wood to use as a lever and cribbing to free him or her, in an emergency. It’s not too difficult to imagine a situation like this after an earthquake, when the fire department is too overloaded to help, and it’s a life or death situation.
Cribbing Exercise: Rescue the Trapped Victim
As you can see in the picture here, we have a victim trapped under a pallet with a huge tire on top of it. The piles of wood are pieces of 2×4, but for purposes of emergency cribbing, they of course don’t have to be as pretty as these. What did we do next? After our FD captain explained the basics, we used a lever and pieces of wood to slowly and safely (it didn’t fall back onto the victim or any of the rescuers!) raise the pallet off of the “victim”, so we could pull her out and do first aid. To see what the end result looks like, take a CERT course! 🙂
Do I expect I’ll be doing any cribbing soon? No. Is it more likely that I’ll need to use a fire extinguisher effectively? Yes. But it’s also a good tool to have in your toolbox, and I know a lot more now about it than I did before.
As with everything we do in our CERT training, this will not make me an expert Search-and-Rescue operator, or a carpenter, physician, or engineer. But it does give me some good ideas for how I can help in a pinch.
On our 6th day of CERT class, we reviewed fire safety and learned how to effectively use a fire extinguisher to put out a real fire.
Let’s review what everyone knows: Fire is really, really dangerous. Not only it is hot, which hurts, it also makes smoke, which is often full of all kinds of other terrible things that can kill you other ways.
We covered a few basics, e.g., use the buddy sytem when fighting a fire, CERT teams should only be fighting small fires, make sure you wear a mask, leather gloves, your green CERT hard-hat (or whatever hard-hat you have handy), etc. Then we spent a fair amount of time reviewing basics, e.g., fire requires heat, oxygen, and fuel. While that may seem boring and basic for a third grade science class, there is one interesting aspect to one part of that triad. The type of *fuel* makes a difference when it comes to how you want to put it out. Your fire extinguisher should be rated for putting out a fire that’s buring a certain type of fuel.
The fuels determine the class of fire:
Class A: Ordinary combustibles – paper, cloth, wood, rubber, plastics
Class B: Flammable liquids, e.g., gasoline
Class C: Energized electrical equipment
Class D: Combustible metal (e.g., aluminum, magnesium) Metals burn? A common survival fire-starter is a block of magnesium! You scrape off shavings add a spark, and they burn hot.
Class K: Cooking oil, e.g., vegetable oil, fats
The fuel matters. If you have a class C fire, spraying water on it could actually kill you, or create dangerous, energized puddles, waiting to electrocute whoever steps in them!
One of the biggest causes of fires after an earthquake is a natural gas leak. After an earthquake, shut off your gas, unless you’re absolutely sure you don’t have a leak. One way to tell you have a leak is you see the gas meter dials moving when you aren’t using any gas.
Let’s say you have a fire in progress. Do you try to put it out? Here are some questions you need answers to:
Do I and my buddy (buddy system!) have the right equipment? (Especially the right type of fire extinguisher.)
Are there any other hazards? (Your safety is Priority 1!)
Is the building structurally damaged?
Can I and my buddy escape?
Can we fight the fire safely?
We reviewed types of fire extinguishers and how to use them. They fall into these categories: water, dry chemical, carbon dioxide, and other specialized types. In addition to being rated by the type of fuel on which they should be used, some have another number to indicate the volume of extinguishing agent.
A CERT Firefighting team in action
We go to use them! The nice part is that we knew what the fuel was (liquid) and had a bunch of fire extinguishers ready. We practiced using the buddy system, had on our safety gear, and used the PASS system, Pull (the pin), Aim, Squeeze, Sweep. The only parts that may not be intuitive are #1 – pulling that pin in the first place. Sometimes people forget to do that in the stress of being near open flame. The other part is the “sweep” part. You will need to aim at the base of the fire (not necessarily the biggest part of the flames, which is where you may intuitively want to aim) and move the fire extinguisher back and forth along the base of the fire, to ensure you covering it fully.
We continued to put out fires, until everyone got a chance to put out at least one. The picture gives you some of an idea of what it looked like. It was dark and a bit rainy, but the flames were big and we were able to put them out. It was fun, and a new experience for most of us.
Reading this is not the same as taking a CERT course and fighting a real fire with a real fire extinguisher.
Can you point to the north? I would guess that it’s OK if you don’t know, because as you read this, you are probably at home or somewhere else familiar and it doesn’t really matter. However, when you figure out what you need to have with you as part of your every-day carry (EDC), you might want to consider a compass, especially if:
You are new to your area
You travel frequently
You often get lost – it’s OK to admit it 🙂
You like to go hiking or camping
But will it be a hassle to carry a compass around with you all the time? Not if it’s a tiny, brass compass like the kind you can buy at Triple Aught Design (TAD Gear). It’s smaller than a dime in diameter, and quite rugged. Here’s what it looks like. And if you want to save a few bucks, and are OK with black instead of green, you can get the same one for $36 at www.bestglide.com (at this link). The compass is known as the Pyser compass, or a NATO survival compass, and it has its origins in World War II, when it was issued to pilots.
You might also want a compass like this if you have a very small survival kit. While there are other small compasses close to this size, at far lower price, I’m not aware of any decent-quality compass that’s this small. If you don’t need the smallest, you can save a few bucks and get a high-quality, slightly larger compass like this.
Below is what mine looks like after several months of every-day carry. You can see that some of the custom green paint has worn away, because I’ve carried it in the change pocket of my jeans, with… change. The constant abrasion of metal coins has worn the green paint around the edge, but the compass still works as it’s supposed to, and I’m not worried about it not looking quite as pretty as it once did.
NATO Brass Button EDC Compass
Since the compass is incredibly small and light, I don’t notice that I’m carrying it, but since I spent ~$40 on it (TAD gear is not inexpensive!), I have been careful about not leaving it in my pocket on laundry day. So far so good.
You won’t want to use this compass as your main compass in an orienteering course. You will want something that provides more detail, like this much larger, very good Silva model. But if you are turned around in a new town, or just reached a fork in the trail and aren’t quite sure if you’re taking the correct direction, and need to double-check and get your bearings, and only have whatever is in your pocket, this tiny compass will do the trick!
Last and (admittedly) probably least, this little compass is just plain cool. It’s really small, it works, it’s durable, and you won’t notice you have it with you, that is, unless you need it!
Day 5 – Terrorism, Hazardous Materials, and Disaster Psychology
Day 5 was an interesting mix of topics: terrorism/hazmat and disaster psychology.
Terrorism/Hazmat
In the first part, we reviewed procedures for hazmat (hazardous materials) and terrorism. As far as CERT is concerned, they’re about the same. Get out. Easy, right? Do you feel prepared now to deal with a hazmat or terrorism scenario? I hope not. Let’s dig a little deeper. But don’t get your hopes up. Just as CERT training won’t train you up to paramedic or EMT level, it also won’t transform you into a counter-terrorism expert or professional hazmat responder. But it will get you thinking!
Since the responses to a hazmat scenario and terrorism are largely similar, we’ll focus on the worse version – terrorism. We started by reviewing what kind of targets exist in our area. They will be similar in your area:
Big business, shopping malls
Military facilities
Schools
Bridges, tunnels, subways
Government buildings
Water supplies
You can easily think of more targets: anywhere where you can find a lot of people or stuff that people care about. This should be a somewhat discouraging exercise, and you will probably be able to think of many vulnerable areas. Isn’t it great that we don’t have to deal with terrorists frequently?
The types of terrorist attack are described with the acronym “CBRNE”, which stands for Chemical (e.g., chlorine gas), Biological (e.g., anthrax), Radiological (e.g., distributed radioactive material), Nuclear (e.g., a nuclear explosion), and Explosives (e.g., dynamite).
We quickly reviewed signs of potential terrorist activity (before the explosion goes off), and how we should react. You guessed it – call the police and get out.
But let’s say you arrive at a disaster scene, ready to help, and you realize that it’s a hazmat or terrorist scenario. Again, the guidance is simple: get out. But how far do you go? The fire department captain who taught this portion of the course gave us an easy-to-follow rule, one of the pearls of wisdom we received on this day:
“If you can hold up your thumb, and you can still see the scene, you are too close.” He told us to keep backing up until you thumb covers up everything. Not just “get out”, but “get really far out.”
And we briefly covered what to do if you need to shelter in place (aka “hunker down”). Assuming there is a cloud of danger (gas, radioactive material, whatever) heading your way, you’ll need to shut off your air conditioning (or furnace, or anything else that draws in outside air), cover any openings to the outside with plastic sheeting (sealed with duct tape), and turn on your radio. Obviously, you’ll want to seal door edges, any vents or heater ducts, and any other cracks in the room that would allow air to enter or exit.
Do you need to worry about suffocating? Not in the short term. There is a lot of air in even a small room (though you probably don’t want to choose a closet). I won’t do the calculations here. Do a little research and you can see for yourself (or let me know if you’re interested and I can write something up and post it).
A couple more caveats concerning contamination:
Basic decontamination: remove all clothes, throw them away, and wash thoroughly
Don’t go into a contaminated area (CERT training doesn’t teach you how to survive this!)
Don’t become part of the problem – leave any hazmat or terrorism response to the professionals
Disaster Psychology
This next section was fascinating, and taught by the city chaplain. Don’t let that throw you! Not only did he not push any religion, he even cussed a little. He was not your typical religious figure, but he was a down-to-earth, slightly gritty, and helpful guy with some very important things to say.
“80% of trauma in a disaster is psychological.” He said this more than once, and we reviewed some examples. As I’ve said in other articles, this is heavy material, and you can expect that people will 1) act irrationally and 2) they may need some help recovering, or getting on the path to recovery.
What is the CERT responder’s role in dealing with people going through various stages of grief or otherwise dealing with their trauma? The chaplain had some simple (simple to discuss, much harder to implement effectively, but it’s the right direction) guidance:
We (whoever has experience) do support, initial care in the first minutes, not long-term counseling
Just acknowledge people’s grief – that’s all you can effectively do
Help them make little decisions around what to do next
People will be distressed, overloaded, and some will shut down
The people in real distress can get real comfort from talking with someone, and maybe that someone is you. Simply by being there to listen, you could make a big different to someone in need by answering these three, simple questions:
Does anyone know I’m here?
Does anyone know that I’m hurting?
Does anyone care?
Hint: Answer “Yes” to all of them. And I hope you’re telling the truth!
What do you NOT want to do? Tell someone that “It’ll be OK.” It won’t be OK – something really bad has happened! “It’s for the best”, “Don’t worry about it”, or other such advice that won’t help people.
The chaplain added “I don’t tell them that we’ll get things back to normal. Things will never be normal again. They will move toward a new ‘normal’.”
Remember, after triage and first aid, expect that some people will need “psychological first aid.” This short article can’t prepare you, but a CERT class should give you a little more info and help you learn some of the basics.
Day 4 – Disaster Medical Part II – More basics, Water, and… Poop
Much of day 2 of Disaster Medical was pretty similar to the first. We had more “what if” questions, and covered some first aid basics, as well as some unique material.
The first-aid-related material was around doing a head-to-toe assessment, using the standard “DCAPBTLS” system, checking for: Deformities, Contusions, Abrasions (scrapes), Puctures, Burns, Tenderness, Lacerations (cuts or gashes), and Swelling. In addition, we reviewed basics for cold and heat-related injuries, burns, bites and stings, and wound care. One more reminder (probably not the last!): if you haven’t taken a first aid course, you should, and you can cover this material there.
But there was some interesting and less common material in this section, specifically “Public Health Considerations” and “Disaster Medical Operations”. I’ll start with the least interesting first.
In the Disaster Medical Operations section, we learned some fundamentals about how to lay out what amounts to a field clinic or hospital, with descriptions of how to lay out a medical treatment area, as well as separate areas to cover triage, transport, morgue and supply. You read right – we need to be able to set up a morgue. I hadn’t thought about that before, but it will be necessary, and it’s worth thinking about. I won’t dig into details here – it’s still up to you to take the course.
The last area I’ll cover in this article is one of the more interesting ones in my opinion: Public Health Considerations. We reviewed some guidelines here on purifying water. This is something everyone should know. If you don’t have water, you’re in big trouble. If you drink contaminated water, it could be just as bad as having none, after the parasites or bacteria are finished ravaging your insides. You must know how to purify water.
The technique covered in this course is to use bleach. Here is the formula:
Use 8 drops of unscented (no “lemon scent” or “fresh scent”) bleach into one gallon of water if it’s clear
If the water is cloudy or dirty looking, double the dose (12 drops)
If the water doesn’t smell like bleach after 1/2-hour, then add 6 more drops and wait 15 more minutes.
If it still doesn’t smell like bleach, repeat #3 until it does.
There you go – pretty simple.
But be careful. Bleach doesn’t last. If you have bleach that’s a year or two old, it may not work at all. You should ensure you have a fresh jug of bleach on hand. Or, if you want to get a little more hard core, you can get calcium hypochlorite (aka “pool shock”, used to clean pool water) and add water whenever you like, and you’ll have instant bleach with which you can treat your water.
There are many other methods available for filtering and purifying water, and you should definitely investigate them. We only covered the bleach option in this course.
And last but not least, we spent very little time on this topic, but it’s worth bringing up, and if you don’t know what to do with it, you’ll be in trouble. You’ll need a plan for poop. Yeah, that’s right. What will you do with your poop? If your toilet doesn’t flush, where will you put it? Hint: *NOT* in the toilet. You’ll just have to fish it out later – yuk!
Here’s what it says in the book: “Burying human waste. Select a burial site away from the operations area and mark the burial site for later cleanup.” What? That’s it? Well, sounds like a piece of cake. But it’s not. Are you going to lean over the burial pit every time you need to go #2? No.
In the old days, folks would dig a hole and build a shack over it, the common outhouse. If nothing else, you’ll need a trench and something you can sit on, and you’ll need to shovel dirt over your mess when you’re done, to prevent flies from spreading bacteria everywhere. But what if there’s snow falling outside? Or it’s pitch-black out and you’re out of flashlight batteries? Will you be stumbling around in the dark, near the hole filled with…? Not a good idea.
Consider an empty five-gallon bucket and another full of dirt or cat litter. Do you business, cover it up, and put the lid back on. That’s a step in the right direction.
This isn’t an article on how to manage your poop if your toilets go away, but instead I intend to get you thinking. In a disaster scenario, you should have a plan for how to use the toilet inside, when your normal toilet isn’t available. If you have that plan, you will be much more comfortable. Think about it, and give it a lot more thought than “you’ll bury it somewhere, sometime.”
This article could save your life, or your child’s. Please pay attention. I recently heard something that got me thinking, and I hope it gets you thinking too.
Emergency preparedness is much more than planning for the power to go out or storing extra tap water. For example, today I attended an exercise that walked through detailed plans that you will never want to see in action: an “active shooter” scenario in a hospital.
What’s an active shooter scenario? In this case, the story was that a man with a handgun was making his way through the hospital, intent on reaching his hospitalized girlfriend, and shooting anyone who got in his way. A security guard went down, and a nurse, and then some patients, and a doctor, and suddenly the bad guy has a hostage – his (ex-) girlfriend. I’ll admit – walking through it gave me goose-bumps. Something like this happening for real would be truly horrible.
It doesn’t have to be a hospital. It could be your workplace, and you probably recall such a story from the news, whether it was at a steel plant where another round of layoffs just hit, a college campus where a mentally unstable student failed another course, or any similar scenario. Put yourself in your workplace, the grocery store where you usually shop, at the mall, or even in your own home (one of the scariest cases, as I describe in “The Road Home”), and then imagine that you have a bad man with a gun, who happens to be shooting. What do you do?
In the exercise I went through, we stepped through existing procedures as the incident progressed, from calling “codes” over the intercom to alerting law enforcement using 911, to other lock-down and alert systems in place. And in the scenario people panicked (of course), injuries needed treatment and there was a lot of general confusion.
In the midst of that confusion I learned something that dramatically increased the value of the exercise for me and the other participants. A law enforcement officer, specifically one of the team leads for our regional SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team, who also runs Active Shooter Response training for all of the local police agencies, had some words of wisdom.
Before I pass these words along, let me make a couple things clear. 1) This article is for educational purposes only and I’m not giving you specific advice for any situation. This is just another tool, another option to consider if faced with a dilemma. 2) In general, if you are given advice by law enforcement, you should probably follow it. If you are given orders by law enforcement in the middle of a bad situation, just follow them. This approach will probably keep you alive, or should at least keep you from getting into worse trouble. You will have to decide, in the middle of whatever situation, what makes sense for you.
Let’s get back to what the SWAT officer said. Given this particular scenario of a lone gunman moving from point A to point B in this building, here is what he said. “In a case like this, you will be told to stay down and hide behind closed doors. That is the official policy. However, that’s not what I would do, and here is my personal advice. Don’t. Get out of the building as quickly as possible and run. I tell my kids at school that if this happens, throw a chair through a window and get out and run. Don’t just wait. Often, the reason you are told to stay and hide is because of liability reasons.”
Did you catch that last part? That’s right, liability reasons. Not life-and-death, common-sense reasons. You may not be getting guidance that is intended to keep you alive, but instead, you’re getting guidance that will protect someone’s backside if you decide to sue them later because of the advice they gave. That advice is what their lawyers require, and that is not necessarily what makes sense.
I talked with the SWAT guy afterward, and the scenario, and some variations on the scenario. For those of you who ask “what if”, yes, there are infinite scenarios that could play out here. The guidance is general, and here is the reasoning behind it.
If someone is indoors, trying to go from one place to another and shooting along the way, you want to go (run) away from that person, vs. waiting in his potential path (whatever path that may be).
Running people are harder to shoot! This one is pretty simple. (If you don’t believe him, try to shoot and hit anything that moves. It’s not easy.)
Outside is bigger than inside. You have a lot of options once you’re outside, including the ability to run in a more directions.
Inside is where the bad guy is. Outside is better.
How can this advice go wrong? You can probably think of a few ways, and one of the most obvious would be in the case of an organized terrorist attack, if they were also waiting for you at the exits. Or you could accidentally run into the path of the shooter instead of away from him. Or maybe there are two shooters and you run into the path of the other one. Like I said, there are countless ways this could play out, but in a scenario with one bad guy, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out: get out of the building.
This guidance is another tool to add to your toolbox. You need to think for yourself, and be able to evaluate the sense of the rules you are expected to follow, especially when your life is at stake!
Things are picking up! We covered the first half of our Disaster Medical material. All told, we covered triaging in a disaster scenario as well as some basic first aid.
Triage is interesting. What happens in triage? You essentially decide who lives and who dies. Wow. Thank goodness we get training on this, and don’t have to completely figure it out on our own if a disaster happens! Yeah, it would still really suck, but it will suck a little less after having gone through this.
The quick version, at least in our county, is that you’ll have to tag people (with colored, non-sticky tape like surveyor’s tape, which you tie on somewhere ) green if they’re walking wounded, yellow if you can wait to treat them further (not life-threatening injuries), red if they have life-threatening injuries they could recover from with immediate treatment, or black and white (stripes) if they are 1) dead or 2) they’re going to be dead soon and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Again, this is heavy stuff to consider. Why subject yourself to these morbid notions? Because if the time comes when you do need to triage, you will have at least a little training under your belt. It’s better to sweat in training than bleed in war, they say. You might as well think now about what tough decisions you might need to make (and this doesn’t only apply to triage), because they will only get harder to make later, in an emergency.
We got to do a hands-on exercise, and kudos to our actors. Some were appropriately noisy (which I expected, but still added to the stress of making the right call) and some were surprisingly quiet (which I guess wouldn’t be a big surprised if they were shell-shocked, now that I think about it). We had to evaluate them on the spot, make a call (green, yellow, red, black & white), and move forward. We directed the walking wounded back to the door we came in through. It was a good learning experience. And just reading or talking about it wouldn’t have been nearly as good of an exercise. Doing this was important, and I know there is more “doing” to do. I’m looking forward to it.
As far as the first aid material goes, you should know this stuff already: how to not contaminate yourself with potentially deadly goo by wearing gloves, mask, and eye protection (if you have them), how to stop bleeding with pressure, putting on a bandage, rolling someone into a recovery position, and more. If you don’t know it, either take a CERT class, or better yet (as far as first aid is concerned) take a first aid and CPR course through your local Red Cross or whoever else teaches it! There is no good reason not to do this. Even if you’re handicapped, they will accommodate you. Please do it.
Another thing I liked about this class: even after taking an EMT course and a variety of first aid courses over the years, I never had to take gloves off when they were actually covered with muck (the goal being to not get any on your skin as you remove the gloves). I won’t give away the teacher’s secret (hint: it’s used in a mocha), but our gloves were actually coated in muck, and we learned whether our technique for removing them worked. A good test, indeed!
We started with paperwork. Not too interesting, at first. They handed out some checklists for 3-day kits, waivers, etc. One of them was an icebreaker, a simple set of questions. One of the questions “What are three things you have with your right now that you can use in case of an emergency?”
When the group went through the exercise, the answers were interesting, and it was a good way to start to get to know classmates. Some people thought their cell phones would be most important. Some people thought their vehicles would be most important, especially those with first aid kits. One other guy and I had written down “my brain” as the most important item. I’m sure that will come up later, especially when we cover “disaster psychology” (which I know is coming – I peeked ahead in the manual). This got people thinking, and led to another set of questions.
After filling out a few more forms, we started discussing three-day preparation boxes and what should go in them. After a somewhat disjointed conversation and many random questions (this idea was new to many, which is probably one of the reasons they’re in the class – good for them!), one lady thoughtfully asked “I’m a nice person and there is no way I’d be able to not help my neighbor in a time of need. What should I do to prepare to help them?”
I’ll be honest – I don’t remember the answer the instructor gave, probably because it differed from what was bouncing around in my head at the time (or maybe my noisy, inner dialogue was drowning her out – that happens sometimes). Here is my answer:
You will need to 1) educate your neighbors, 2) prepare for them (stock supplies that they can’t or won’t), or 3) be ready to listen to them crying when you won’t give up your stores or fix their broken stuff for them. (I’m not taking evacuation scenarios into account in this case.)
Have you done that? Do you know what level of preparedness your neighbors have? Will they become assets or liabilities if a disaster affects your neighborhood? Do you think you should have answers to these questions? I think you should.
Consider these options:
The “Map Your Neighborhood” program (more on this later – I’ll discuss my experience doing it in my neighborhood) could be an effective solution.
Get to know your neighbors, if you don’t already. This used to be a common practice, but more recently it’s less common, with people moving from home to home more often, especially in more urban areas.
How do you do this? You’re clever. If you’re not friendly, pretend you’re friendly. You can find a way. Bake a pie and take it over. Find a way to do something nice, that fits with who you are, your best guess as to who they are, etc. Unless you’re already off to a bad start somehow, they’ll respond in kind and you’ve just kick-started a hopefully productive relationship!
And if you’re the gregarious type, throw a block party!
You don’t have to be a social butterfly to see the value in knowing your neighbors. They can be beneficial or a huge burden in a bad situation. Make the choice now, and educate them if they need it. And you’ll learn something in the process.
Day 2 – ICS: Incident Command System
I lumped day 2 into this article because I don’t have a lot to say about it. I have to give credit to our instructor for making it somewhat interesting by using a wedding planning analogy, but when it comes down to it, the Incident Command System just isn’t super-exciting to me.
That doesn’t mean it’s not important. We all need to get along. And by “get along”, I mean that I agree that it is useful to have a common command structure to use in the event of an emergency, along with a common language to describe who has which role, a way for different groups to work together, etc.
If you have any reason to interact with people doing CERT, Search & Rescue (SAR), or any other emergency management organizations, you should learn about the Incident Command System (ICS) because odds are very good that they’ll be using that structure.
The good news is that you don’t have to pay for it. FEMA makes training available online, and there are usually two courses you should review: ICS-100 and ICS-700.
It will take a little time, but it will also give you a good idea of what to expect on an emergency scene if you’re working with local, state, and federal government, and more often now, non-governmental organizations who also choose to follow this common (and relatively simple) set of guidelines.
Take a look for yourself. Don’t expect a page-turner, but do expect to learn at least a little bit.
I signed up for a local CERT course and just took my first class. I knew that much of the content wouldn’t be new to me, although I did expect to learn something new – I always do! And so far I have learned some good things, which I’ll be passing along to you as I progress through the course.
CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Training. Many cities offer courses like CERT through their Office of Emergency Management (or whatever they call it). If you go to your hometown’s website (e.g., Anytown.gov), you can probably find a link to an office that deals with emergency preparedness topics for your area. If your town isn’t big enough, try the county or the state.
If a course is offered but not called “CERT”, don’t worry about it. The goals are largely the same, across the different courses, at least the ones I’ve seen in my area (Washington State). Please let me know if you can’t find anything locally. I would be happy to do a little digging to see what I can find, if you aren’t able to.
Why do you care about my CERT course? I’ll walk you through at least some parts of each class, so that you will be able to determine:
Would it be useful for you, friends, or family?
What topics are covered?
What should you expect to learn?
Such preparedness courses have a lot to offer, and as you read further, I think you’ll realize that if you haven’t taken a course, you probably should.
At first glance, yes, but after reading a bit more, their intro is a clever approach to bringing attention to general disaster preparedness. Good job, CDC!
While I personally prefer to do more than only prepare just enough to keep my family safe until we can make it to a shelter (versus sheltering longer-term in our home), most of what they have to say is quite relevant.
For example, some good tips include determining what potential threats you’re concerned about, having three days of food, water, and other supplies on hand for a couple days (although I recommend at least seven days, preferably 14 or more), and knowing your evacuation route.
Good news! I’m actively (as of this posting) working on my second book, and I am confident you’ll find it interesting. Since you came to this website in the first place, the odds are good that you will be interested in a step-by-step, easy-to-follow guide to basic disaster preparedness, and that’s what I aim to deliver.
Here is a little teaser: how do I define “basic” preparedness? At least three days of self-sufficiency, in areas such as food, water, shelter, light, heat, power, medications, communications, and… there will be much more. This book is intended for ordinary people (no camouflage or bomb shelters necessary) who want to make sure they and their families are realistically prepared for a disaster, at least at a basic level. I’ll make sure you have all of the bases covered, and I’ll be including a variety of way to test your preparedness. That’s right – you can be sure your preparations will work. This won’t be a bunch of “doomsday survival” checklists or material from 1950’s survival manuals, but will be a fresh look at preparing in this century, using modern resources.
At first glance, it may seem like a lot of work to put together a robust three-day kit, but it’s easier than you think, and I’m going to explain it to you.
When will the book be ready? As you may know, writing is a lot of work! I’m currently planning on getting the first draft complete by the end of October. It’s an ambitious goal, but I think I can pull it off. After that, I’ll revise, work on cover art, talk to an editor, etc. – all of the fun stuff involved in printing a book.
The Yaesu VX-8R packs a lot of features into a tiny package. How tiny? Take a look! It’s about the size of a deck of cards, if you unscrew the antenna. Take a look at this:
It's the size of a deck of cards!
What can you do with this radio? You can talk on four different amateur radio bands (50/144/222/430 MHz, if you’re interested), while listening to broadcast radio (for example, FM radio) at the same time!
This antenna is long, flexible, and very efficient.
You can use a Bluetooth headset with it, and you can attach a GPS receiver to the radio or to a an attached speaker microphone. When you have GPS installed, you can also use APRS functionality, which means you can transmit your location to other radios, can send and receive simple text messages, and more.
If you wanted to get creative, you could even attach an special antenna and talk to an amateur radio satellite! It can receive weather alerts on special weather radio channels, can easily communicate with repeaters, and more. This is an amazing radio.
The VX-8R has been replaced by the VX-DR and the VX-GR. They’re all small, powerful, and loaded with features. Take a good look at the specifications, since there are some differences.
You can get more information atwww.Yaesu.com, on the VX-8R, the VX-DR, and the VX-GR.
Of course, the antenna adds some size to the radio, but you have many options, from very small (usually inefficient, for short-range communications) to longer (more efficient, if you can conveniently carry it). For example, in the picture directly above you can see the VX-8R with a Diamond whip antenna, which is quite efficient. Soon, I’ll post a picture of my “stealth” antenna. It’s very small, and very inefficient, but very convenient when I need to carry my radio in an inside jacket pocket and only need to communicate short-range.
Is the VX-8R the only small radio? Is it the only one that does APRS? Are some easier to use? No, yes, and yes! Some other common, powerful, feature-filled radios are Icom’s IC-91A and Kenwood’s TH-F6A. And there are many more. Do your research and you’ll find a radio that fits you well. 73!
You may have heard about the book I’ve been writing, “The Road Home,” a story about a boy and his father surviving an earthquake’s aftermath and trying to get back to their family. It’s an exciting story, but it’s also full of cool non-fiction content, like some of the stuff you can see on this site.
The book is done! It’s available for sale! You can see it (and even buy it if you want) here: https://www.createspace.com/3587936. Take a look – I think you’ll like it.
Here’s a picture of the cover:
Cover of my new book, “The Road Home”
More details are on the way soon.
While you can buy it at Amazon.com, in print or in Kindle format, you can also buy it at my eStore (link above). Soon, I’ll post a special coupon code, so you can buy it in the eStore at a discount. Yes, buy it from me and it’ll be cheaper than Amazon. More details soon.
Many people and vehicles use APRS to broadcast their location. Their radios act as beacons, and they can be seen online here: http://aprs.fi. (Give it a minute to load – you may have a lot of data to show in your area.) This map provides up-to-date, accurate location information showing people, vehicles, boats, etc., as they continuously transmit packets GPS of data to other APRS-compatible radios. Take a look and see for yourself.
You can see a recent snapshot of APRS activity across the U.S. here, from late 2010: http://www.aprs.org/maps/USA-Turkey-10.png. As you can see, most of the APRS traffic takes place in urban areas or near highways, but plenty of people in rural areas use APRS too.
APRS gives your radio some fascinating flexibility! But what is it? ‘APRS’ stands for Automatic Packet Reporting System, a system developed by Bob Bruniga, whose call sign is WB4APR. (In case you’re wondering why the call sign matters, ham guys like you to know what their call sign is, in case you come across it on the airwaves sometime.)
It’s an interesting, flexible, and useful system, which allows users to transmit text messages, alerts, bulletins, etc., in addition to their GPS coordinates. It’s a form of digital communication that you can use with handheld, mobile, and base station amateur radios.
You might be able to imagine how handy this system would be for people on search and rescue missions or during other emergencies, aside from during everyday communications. A rescuer can transmit his or her location while searching for a victim. A support vehicle on scene or a vehicle on the way to help could be located in an instant on a map, at any time. A standard status report could be given with a few button clicks. That’s cool!
Everyone should know basic first aid and CPR. However, you probably shouldn’t attempt first aid techniques if you’ve never actually been trained on how to do them properly. If you make a mistake, you could accidentally make a person’s injuries even worse! There are a variety of options for taking a certified, safe first aid course.
The Red Cross commonly offers several different courses, and there is probably at least first aid and a CPR course available in your area. You could also check with your local hospital or fire department. Why take first aid and CPR? Because someone you know, sometime in your life, will probably hurt themselves, maybe even seriously, and you should be able to help! You may even save someone’s life.
Neat Trick: One ‘tool of the trade’ you may learn about in a basic first aid course is a technique to determine whether a splint is too tight: you give a toenail or fingernail of the splinted limb a little squeeze. If the pink/red color (which is blood flowing back to the area) comes back quickly, that means you are probably getting enough blood flow in that area. If the color stays white or light pink and doesn’t darken again, then blood isn’t flowing as quickly as it should, and you may need to loosen the ties on the splint, in order to prevent even more damage to the wounded area. But remember, this book is not a first aid course and I’m not a doctor – go take a real course with your local Red Cross!
The Quick Version: You transmit a message with your radio, the repeater receives the message, and the repeater simultaneously re-broadcasts that message, usually with much more power and range.
Now for the some interesting details…
Many repeaters listen for a special tone, which is included in the signal that carries your voice when you transmit your spoken words. Usually this is programmed into your radio when you set up the frequency to use with the repeater. Without that special tone, the repeater won’t repeat what you transmitted.
The offset tells your radio what distance to move up or down the frequency spectrum, in order to order to match what the repeater will receive and transmit.
For example, a repeater will receive a signal on 146.050 MegaHerz (MHz), and then re-transmit that same signal on 146.650 MHz (with a lot more power and range, so that many more people can hear it).
This means that when you use your radio, you will press the transmit button, your radio will transmit your voice on 146.050 MHz, the repeater will receive your transmission, and then it will re-transmit it on 146.650 MHz. That way your radio can both broadcast and hear any replies, but now instead of having limited power and range (since in this case, you may be using a low-power handheld radio), now your message can be broadcast from the top of a nearby mountain (where repeaters are often located) with many times the power. Cool, right?
The acronym MRE stands for “Meal, Ready to Eat.” An MRE is usually packaged as a full meal, including a main dish, crackers or bread, and some kind of spread like peanut butter, cheese or jam. They usually also contain a snack, dessert, spoon, gum, salt, pepper, instant coffee, cream, sugar, and even toilet paper. Newer MRE’s also usually have a special heater that is activated by pouring a small amount of water into a plastic bag, which can be used to heat the food when the weather is cold. (Some MRE main dishes taste much better warm than cold!) MRE’s can be stored for up to three years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, although they can last for years longer than that, stored at lower temperatures. Although they are heavier than most freeze-dried backpacking meals, they are sometimes quite handy because they don’t require any cooking or boiling water.
In recent years, it has become very difficult if not impossible to obtain surplus military MRE’s, although they are available legally from various distributors. For short-term, easy-to-prepare, high-calorie meals that require no additional water or preparation, MRE’s are hard to beat!
A ham radio operator is issued a call sign by the FCC, after he or she passes a licensing exam. The call sign is used to identify the person operating the radio, whenever transmitting on ham frequencies. Since 1934, west of the Mississippi, call signs that start with “K” are issued, and east of the Mississippi, call signs that start with “W” are issued. If you listen to music on the radio in the car or at home, you will occasionally hear the station announce “This is KMPS” or “You’re listening to WKRP” (or some other combination of letters) – this is their call sign, also issued by the FCC. Since the station is a business, their call-sign is a slightly different format, but the idea is the same. People who talk on certain frequencies have to identify themselves with a call sign. When you get your license, you’ll get your own call-sign!
If you’re willing to pay a few dollars extra, you can get a call-sign with letters and numbers that you choose, called a “vanity call sign.” And depending on the level of license that you choose to get, they will be anywhere from four to six characters long. If you are able to get the “Extra” license, you can get a call sign with four, five, or six characters. Having a “General” license will allow you to use five or six characters, and the “Technician” license will allow you to use six. If you prefer, you can keep the original six-character that you are issued by the FCC, regardless of what additional licenses you may get later. Here are some fun possibilities, combining different characters: N0HOW, K1SS, K0RN, W0MAN, WA5HME, and KN1TTR. When it’s your turn, you choose!
What is ham radio? It’s the term people use to refer to amateur radio, a fun hobby for many. But why “ham”? Some people speculate that it’s because certain people involved in amateur radio back in the old days really loved to talk, to and would “ham it up”, telling long stories to their buddies when they’d get together on the airwaves to chat.
How does ham radio work? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has set aside certain frequencies for people to use for non-business-related communication. People use these frequencies to talk to each other using different kinds of radio equipment. Not only can you talk back and forth on these radios, you can also send text messages, transmit GPS coordinates, talk to repeaters, send and receive TV signals, bounce signals off of satellites or even the moon. Some people have even used hand-held radios to talk with the International Space Station! That’s right – a person on the ground aims an antenna upward, tunes a radio to the right frequency, and has a conversation with an astronaut who is also a ham radio operator. Pretty crazy, right?
To use a radio that works on amateur radio frequencies, you need to take a simple test and get a license. The first license, called “Technician”, is not difficult to get, and there are a variety of books, CD’s, and websites available to walk you through the questions and answers which are all published already. Once you’ve reviewed the material and feel comfortable, you can take a test and get your own license! Many ham radio clubs administer the tests, and will be happy to help you with the simple paperwork at the same time. Soon after, you’ll get your call-sign from the FCC, and you can get on the air!
What should be in your backpack when you go on a hike?
The “Top Ten List” contains all of the essentials for wilderness survival, which everyone should always have with them when they go hiking in the wilderness, even just for a day trip. For overnight expeditions, you should have a variety of additional supplies (for example, a sleeping bag), but this is a list of the minimum supplies needed.
Here is the list, with some examples you can research further. Of course, if you’re hiking in the desert or the rain forest, you’ll have different needs, but this is a good starting point for most hikers:
Emergency Shelter: A ‘bivvy-bag’, plastic tube tent, ‘sil-tarp’, poncho, large garbage bag, or mylar blanket (‘space blanket’)
Jacket: It should have a hood, and be warm and waterproof (consider Gore-tex)
Fire starter: Waterproof matches, stormproof lighter, ferrocerium rod, magnesium block
Water: At least one liter per person, with a way to filter and/or purify more. Depending on your location, you may need to carry two liters or more, even for a day trip.
Food: Snacks, Clif bars, MRE snacks
Map and compass: A high-quality compass and topographical map
Knife: A sturdy, fixed-blade knife, if that’s legal where you live. Otherwise, a lock-blade, folding knife will work.
Multi-tool: Made by a reputable manufacturer, like Leatherman, Gerber, or SOG
Whistle: Many survival whistles can be heard from a great distance, and they weigh as little as a fraction of an ounce – there is no reason to not have one of these at all times.
Flashlight: Use an LED flashlight – modern ones are very bright, and the ‘bulbs’ never burn out. Don’t forget spare batteries.
What should you do with all of these items? Obviously, you will need to know how to use them. While I’ll cover many of these topics in upcoming articles, in the meantime, you need to do your own research.
But wait! There’s more! One last thing – the most important thing you must have with you – and thank goodness you already have it screwed onto your shoulders – your head! If you don’t know what to do with any of the items listed above, you need to learn. Your brain is the most important tool you have, and if you have the ability to think clearly and apply relevant experience to a dangerous and even life-threatening survival situation, you will be much better off.
Are you familiar with the term Everyday Carry? It’s also known as “EDC.” Long story short, EDC gear is what you have on your person all the time.
Aside from the common items such as a watch, wallet, cell phone, a list of things commonly carried by people who like to be prepared often contains many or all of the following:
A pocketknife: This is one of the most common things carried on a daily basis. As long as man could shape metal, he’s carried a knife as a tool or weapon. A pocketknife has more uses than I can list here. One example of a relatively inexpensive and high-quality knife, which can be opened easily with one hand and clipped into a pocket or waistband is the Spyderco Delica.
A multi-tool: One of the most popular is the Leatherman brand of multi-tool. Personally, I prefer the Leatherman Charge, and Leatherman makes several other very useful variations. Other popular brands are Gerber, SOG, or Victorinox. These tools are amazingly handy, and often contain pliers, wire cutters, a knife blade, saw and/or metal file, various screwdrivers and more! With a multi-tool on your belt, you can accomplish hundreds of useful tasks.
A flashlight: With a flashlight in your pocket (or on your belt), you can….. well, see in the dark! I guess it goes without saying how that can be handy in a crawlspace or attic, when you’re looking under the sofa, or just when it’s dark out. You can find a variety of small (or even tiny) flashlights that run off of a watch battery, or AAA, AA, or CR123 batteries. The brightness ranges from just barely visible to hundreds of lumens for a pocket flashlight.
With just these three items, you can solve a variety of problems, day or night. There are many additional options you could include, for example a lighter (fire is both cool and handy, depending on your situation), a thumb drive (essential if you work with computers), pepper spray (OC spray, a simple and effective self-defense tool), duct tape, or extra medication.
One of the best resources for learning more about Everyday Carry is the forum dedicated entirely to this topic: www.edcforums.com. The folks there would be happy to help you with any questions, and have a ton of great ideas.
