Preparedness: hip or hype?
It’s go time
May 8, 2014: A follow up to this post can be found here.
When I first started working for the US Department of Homeland Security, I joked with friends about how “homelandy” it felt sometimes. We are inundated with emergency protocols and continuity of operations plans and exercises. At first I thought, “Come on, I work for Immigration, not FEMA.” I laughed when a man in a blue combat-looking uniform (yes, he had a gun) asked our orientation class if we had a “go kit.” Actually, he wanted us to have two “go kits:” one at home and one in the office.
In case you need to GO!
This week, in my new office in San Francisco, colleagues gave a presentation on personal emergency preparedness. “Winging it is not a plan,” said a woman in a FEMA video. We were given checklist to evaluate our personal emergency preparedness as “silver,” “gold,” or “platinum,” based on developing things like a family communications plan or having 72 hours’ worth of water. The office is having a contest to see who can get to platinum the fastest.
I don’t have two go kits. I don’t even have one. My communication plan is to send a text blast to my family on the other side of the country and hope that they get it.
I feel pretty lame about my own preparedness. (And I love this stuff. I drank the homelandy kool-aid.)
Today, the White House published a new report on climate change, urging Americans to get prepared. Extreme weather is going to worsen. Depending on where you live, severe storms, droughts, flooding, or other disasters are going to be more common. And I wonder: how much of this are we tuning out? How close does a disaster have to strike before we are motivated to actually get prepared?
Does this report make a difference? To you? To anyone? Have you even heard about it, and through what channel? What role does the media play in the struggle to make people take preparedness seriously?
I recall the behavior of many people on the East Coast (myself included) when Hurricane Sandy was first predicted to make landfall in our area. Preparedness amounted to whether or not you had enough wine and board games… because (W00T!!) we are definitely getting the day off of work tomorrow! The reality of Sandy’s wrath was worse than most of us had imagined or prepared for.
While I struggle to get my “go kits” together in order to participate in the office challenge, I offer cynically that this new climate change report won’t change your preparedness behavior.
Will this essay?
