Create a Family Response Plan

It's 2:40 a.m. and your family is fast asleep.

Just a few miles away, a train loaded with more than 1 million pounds of toxic chemicals misses a switch and barrels into a parked locomotive. The train derails and one of the cars spews out more than 180,000 pounds of chlorine.

A lethal plume silently advances toward your sleeping family…

By 3:30, your home's ventilation system is circulating the toxic fumes through every room. You awaken suddenly, clutching at your chest. You've never felt such an intense burn. You're shaken as eardrum-piercing screams echo from down the hall. You scramble to find your children coughing uncontrollably. What is happening? What do you do?

This is not a carefully crafted scenario to frighten you. The residents of Graniteville, South Carolina, faced this crisis and had to make these life-or- death decisions on the morning of January 6, 2005. Tragically, some didn't know how to respond - they paid for their lack of preparedness with their lives or their health.

Figure 1: Aerial photo of the Graniteville derailment.
Photo courtesy of the EPA

What is a Response Plan?

A response plan is a pre-determined set of guidelines and action steps designed to improve your ability to make key decisions and safeguard yourself and your family during the danger, chaos and stress that accompany disasters. The plan should be relevant to the hazards in your area and should be actionable, functional and sufficiently comprehensive.

During the Graniteville incident, the residents didn't know what steps to take to shelter-in-place, they had no real plan to evacuate and they had no means of receiving alerts. Were they aware that in an urban area, certain toxic chemicals can cause irreversible damage to those as far away as 14 miles from an incident?

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that they did. Nine perished, 550 sought medical treatment and 5,400 were forced to evacuate for up to two weeks.

But what if the risk didn't involve a train derailment and chemical release? What if you were faced with a natural disaster such as a tornado, flood or hurricane? A pipeline rupture, dirty bomb or other terrorist attack? An epidemic?

What is Your Plan?

As much as you would like to believe, or at least hope, that you or your family will never have to endure or overcome the effects of a major disturbance, disasters do not discriminate. Whether you are a stock broker living in New York City, a doctor in Chicago, or a factory worker in Graniteville, South Carolina, we are all vulnerable.

And just having a Basic Response Plan reduces the risks and greatly increases the probability that you and your family will successfully endure the incident. Crafting an effective plan is not only prudent, but it is the responsibility of the leaders of families to ensure that their loved ones can safeguard themselves when disaster strikes. A secondary benefit of having a well-crafted plan is the sense of empowerment and peace of mind you feel when you know your risks and know that you can take specific actions to limit these risks.

It gives you some control over the outcome.

How Effective is Your Current Plan?

You can gauge the efficacy of your plan by asking yourself the following questions:

Do you know what your potential risks are?

• Is your plan specifically designed to reduce risks that are relevant to your area?
• Do you know what your city, county and state plan to do during various incidents? How would this impact your plans?
• Where will you meet your family if a disaster strikes? Do they know where to meet?
• How will you communicate with your loved ones if the normal infrastructure isn't working?
• If you lost power, do you have sufficient food, water, flashlights and batteries?
• Do you know how to shut off your gas, water and electricity?
• Do you have a supply of your life-sustaining medications readily available?
• Do you have the necessary supplies collected that will enable you and your family to quickly evacuate the area?

Why Doesn't Everyone Already Have a Plan?

While Emergency Management officials consistently urge people to act, and most agree it is important and even critical to have a plan, people still do not take that initial step. They are simply too busy or are overwhelmed by the complexity of the task.

But having even the most basic plan is better than having no plan at all.

How Do You Build Your Plan?

The following are some basic steps to get you started:

• Assess your risk.
• Contact your local emergency management office and ask for a list of the hazards or risks you face in your area.
• Prioritize the list and use it as a basis for developing your Response Plan.
• Plan your response.
• Develop a communications plan.
• Create a contact list with family and friend's phone numbers and addresses.
• Create a list of emergency numbers along with identifying the locations of all emergency facilities and potential shelters.
• Develop a home escape and evacuation plan.
• Determine how you will get out of your home, especially if it has been damaged or is affected.
• Identify potential evacuation routes in all directions, as the nature of the incident will drive route selection.
• Designate a "just-in-case" rally point for potential evacuation scenarios where family members know to meet even if all communications are down.
• Develop a sheltering-in-place plan.
• Identify which steps to take during various incidents.
• Identify potential "safe rooms" in your home that would provide the best protection during various incidents.
• Position necessary equipment and supplies in areas in which they will most likely be used.
• Prepare yourself.
• Maintain a 14-day supply of food, water and provisions that will enable you to shelter-in-place in case you are unable or it is imprudent to evacuate.
• Store an ample supply of your over-the-counter and prescription medications.
• Develop an evacuation kit that contains sufficient food, water, and supplies to sustain you and your family for up to 72 hours during an evacuation.
• Rehearse your plan and train yourself.
• Ensure all family members know the plan.
• Rehearse your plan to determine if it is functional, and make adjustments.
• Pursue CPR and First Aid training as well as other specialized training depending upon your needs.
• Observe daily events.
• Identify triggers that might cause you to implement your plan and ensure you monitor those potential triggers.
• Sign up for reverse 911 services.
• Install a public alert all-hazards radio that is always on and can wake you if an incident occurs.
• Maintain an overall awareness of what is occurring in your local area.
• Increase your readiness level when the threat of incident occurring increases.

What's the Next Step?

These are just some of the initial steps. When an incident occurs, you will need to implement your plans, care for your family for the duration of the incident, and ultimately lead your family's recovery. Your local emergency management office may be able to help you with the basics.

If you want to take your plan to the next level and ensure it is actionable, functional and sufficiently comprehensive, you can contact the Emergency Management Specialists at Sovereign Deed. They can provide detailed risk assessments, expert advice, professional training, specialized gear and provisions, communications solutions and more. Whether you implement these steps or enlist the assistance of our experts, start developing a plan now. Commit yourself to making one phone call, either to your local emergency management office or to Sovereign Deed.

Take that first step and begin taking responsibility for your family's safety today.

Plan.  Provide.  Protect…The Sovereign Deed Promise™