How You Can Help Your Neighbors in an Emergency

When an earthquake hits, when a wildfire starts or when tornadoes come whirling through your neighborhood, some people will be ready. Others will not. No matter where you live, there is potential for natural disasters or man-made emergencies to strike. While first responders are always on the scene as quickly as possible, often they won’t be able to reach everyone affected in a timely manner. When it comes to planning your family’s emergency routine, it’s beneficial to include your neighbors and make a plan to help each other if and when the time comes.

Neighborhood Emergency Preparedness Tips

When neighbors help neighbors and communities come together, we can save more lives than ever before. The first step in learning how to help the community during an emergency is to get out there and meet your neighbors and others in the community. Find out if there’s already a neighborhood plan in place. If not, you should set a date for a first meeting to get everyone in your community together to establish a neighborhood plan.

It can be difficult to establish one emergency plan for an entire neighborhood. If you’re having trouble getting people together, you can meet with your block and form a plan with fewer people, or even make a plan for just your family and direct neighbors. When it comes to emergency planning, however, remember that the more people you meet and can rely on, the more help you’ll have during an emergency.

At your first meeting you should compile a neighborhood list with everyone’s contact information. It’s also important to discuss and note special skills (for instance, do you have any doctors in the area?), discover who will need the most help (children, elderly, disabled and even pets), and decide who will check on the special needs neighbors first.

Your community plan should include multiple evacuation routes and nearby meet up spots. In case you can’t evacuate, you should also discuss steps you can each take while waiting for help to arrive. Sharing shelter, transportation, emergency food and power generators can help save families money and ensure everyone has some place to go and something to eat. However, each and every home should have their own emergency kit with basic first aid supplies. It’s also important to keep solar or battery powered radios on hand so you can monitor the surrounding situation. When the power goes out or cell service goes down, two-way radios are perfect for neighborhood communication.

When everyone has agreed to an emergency plan – it’s ok if it takes several meetings – it can be a good idea to conduct a neighborhood drill and hold another meeting afterward where you discuss what worked and what didn’t. You can incentivize people to participate by turning it into a fun, social event with food and drinks.

Not only is creating an emergency neighborhood plan beneficial to the entire community, but it’s also a great way to get out and get to know your neighbors. Do you have an emergency neighborhood plan in place? Let us know your best neighborhood emergency preparedness tips in the comments below!

How to Prepare for a Workplace Emergency

Ever hear the old military adage about prior proper planning? It goes like this: “Prior proper planning prevents poor performance.” Although we don’t all have commanders at work, taking a page out of the military’s handbook is the best way to plan for workplace emergencies and evacuations.

According to OSHA, a workplace emergency is an unexpected situation that affects your employees and customers, affects your operations or causes physical or environmental damage. This can include floods, fires, workplace violence or civil disturbances. The best way to safeguard against these situations is to develop an emergency action plan. OSHA requires some businesses to have emergency action plans by law, but not all. However, even if you’re not required to do so, it never hurts to prepare.

Below are some of the points OSHA says your emergency action plan should include (you can find the complete list of recommendations on pages 2 and 3 here):

• An emergency policy and procedure;
• Emergency escape procedures and route assignments (Do departments evacuate to a certain place? Do floors evacuate to a certain place?);
• Names of people in charge of emergency procedures, both in and outside the company;
• Instructions for employees who remain on the premises during an emergency to perform essential services such as working fire extinguishers and shutting down workplace equipment;
• Outline of medical or rescue duties for any employee assigned to perform;
• A way to alert employees that an emergency is occurring and a way for employees to report emergencies.

Sometimes a workplace emergency will require an evacuation of the people on the premises. Local disasters and events may mean authorities will order you to evacuate the building. In all other cases, it is crucial that you appoint a person in charge of deciding whether to evacuate the premises and establish a clear chain of command. A disorganized evacuation can have unfortunate consequences, such as personal injuries and property damage.

Evacuation procedures should also be included in your emergency action plan. Below are some useful evacuation elements that every plan should have:

• Procedures for helping visitors, employees and people with disabilities off the premises;
• A way to account for employees after an evacuation;
• Conditions under which it may be better to stay in the building rather than evacuating (such as chemical contaminations);
• Which, if any, employees will stay after the evacuation to carry out essential operations;
• Respirators for employees.

All of these can and must be adapted to your particular building and situation. For instance, emergency and evacuation procedures might be slightly different for high-rise buildings as opposed to low-rise buildings, so it’s important to do your research.

Basically, leadership and planning are the main points you need to make sure emergency situations go as smoothly as they can and you can begin operating business as usual as soon as possible. The government has online tools in place to help you craft an emergency action plan if you never have before or if you want to review your current procedures.

Once you have your emergency action plan completed, share it with your employees and publish needed materials, such as escape routes, in common workplace areas.