Do You Have a Plan?

In an emergency seconds matter. Knowing how to respond to a crisis situation can minimize the risk of injury or even death, and lessen the sense of panic and fear. That is why it is important for every family to have an emergency plan outlining steps to take in response to different emergency situations. An effective plan should include such things emergency contact numbers, escape routes from your home and neighborhood, a communications plan for contacting family members, and plans for taking care of pets.

Detailed instructions for developing an emergency plan are available here on the More Prepared website.
FEMA's Ready America website provides a lot of valuable information about emergency planning and also offers a free service that allows you to create and store your own emergency plan online.

Today there are many new emergency planning tools. The website Mashable recently ran an article by Mollie Vandor entitled "How to Prepare for Disasters Using Social Media."  It explains such things as:
* how to create escape route maps using Google's MyMaps service
* how to create and store emergency ID cards online
* how to create an online home inventory

Despite the availability of such useful tools, many Americans remain ill-prepared for a disaster. A recent report by FEMA found that only 53% of Americans were confident that they knew what to do in the first five minutes of an emergency. Nearly 60% said they were unfamiliar with local evacuation routes and more than half did not know the location of local shelters. Surprisingly, only 37% of those surveyed believed that a natural disaster was likely to affect their community.

Creating a family emergency plan is a good first step toward ensuring that you are not part of the under-prepared majority.