Is Your Family Prepared for an Emergency? Part 2

Make a Plan: The second step towards making sure your family is prepared for an emergency is to make a plan. Once you have a plan, you need to make sure everyone knows their part and you need to practice that plan. If you don’t review and practice your plan, things can backfire. For instance, a parent could end up dying when he rushes into a burning house to save his child because he thinks the child is still inside, when the child is actually outside, but didn’t know where to meet in the event of a fire.

Plans should include multiple escape routes for all family members. It should also include multiple locations for your family to meet at in the event that your first preference is not safe for some reason. Our family includes maps of our neighborhood with multiple meet up locations clearly labeled in order of preference, in our emergency bags. Such maps can be useful in the event of an emergency when stress may impair a person’s memory and he may not be able to remember meet up locations.

There is a fascinating book, entitled The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why , by Amanda Ripley, which emphasizes the importance of making and practicing emergency plans. Ms. Ripley does an excellent job of interviewing multiple disaster survivors and researchers to track down the reasons why some people survive disasters and some don’t. She concludes that human beings go through several emotional and physical stages during disasters. How a person reacts during each stage can determine whether or not the person survives the disaster. In each stage, a person’s chances of surviving are greatly increased if he has knowledge of the type of disaster and has planned and rehearsed an escape route.

The first stage most people go through during a disaster is denial. People have a tendency to believe that disasters only happen to “other people”. We believe that everything is safe and fine, because it always has been before. “Psychologists call this tendency ‘normalcy bias’. The human brain works by indentifying patterns. It uses information from the past to understand what is happening in the present and to anticipate the future.” (Ripley, page 9) Without these patterns, humans have an amazing inability to make good decisions. This denial can lead to deadly delays. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, survivors waited an average of six minutes before heading downstairs, some waited as long as forty-five minutes.

The second phase that Ms. Ripley covers in her book is deliberation. This is when fear may come in to play. The body undergoes some amazing transformations when experiencing extreme fear. Our blood changes so that it can more easily coagulate in the event of an injury. Meanwhile, the blood vessels also constrict so that we bleed less from any injuries sustained. Hormones rush, giving our muscles incredible abilities and causing our body to release natural painkillers. Yet, the same hormones that produce these potentially lifesaving bodily reactions, also interfere with our ability to reason. Suddenly, things such as how to punch out a window screen, throw down a fire escape ladder, and put on a life jacket may be more than our brains can handle if these actions are not a part of our rote memories.

After and if, she says, people get through these first two phases, they reach the third phase of the human reaction to a disaster, the decisive moment. Despite government officials’ fears, rarely do people panic at this critical juncture. People are much more likely to literally become paralyzed with fear. While this paralysis may actually save your life if a wild animal is trying to eat you, convincing the animal that you are dead meat, thereby not fresh nor safe to eat, it is not a good reaction to have during a fire, tornado, or while on board sinking ship. Paralysis occurs when a creature feels that “almost all hope is lost, when escape seems impossible, and when the situation is unfamiliar to the extreme.” (page 177) It can be so extreme that a victim will not even attempt to put on a life jacket to save himself from drowning or get up and walk out of a burning plane wreckage. People who have rehearsed emergency responses, who know where exits are, who know what to expect, are much less likely to fall victim to paralysis if escape is possible.

Though one can hardly prepare for all types of disasters, doing things such as reviewing fire escape plans with children, paying attention to flight attendants during the preflight lecture, and noting emergency exits when in unfamiliar buildings can help to ingrain your survival skills into rote memory and improve your and your family’s odds of surviving disasters.

Ms. Ripley has a website for her book, which has additional survival preparedness resources: www.amandaripley.com/resources

Ripley, Amanda.The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why. New York: Crown, 2008

About the Author

I’m a blogger, runner, geocacher, avid reader, theatre goer, tea lover, independent and foreign film watcher, homeschooler, mom of five, wife, sister, daughter, friend… I live in Sammamish, WA and have been married to Zeus for seventeen years. I am a stay-at-home mom of five children Hermes, Athena, Artemis, Ares, and Persephone. I homeschool all of my children. We have a dog (Cerebus), two cats (Medusa and Leo), and a rabbit (Pegasus). With so many children and pets, our household tends to be a bit busy.

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