Are You Ready For The Big One?

My Roosevelt neighbors sleep with hard hats, boots, flashlights, and emergency preparedness booklets under their beds.

Some of us are members of our neighborhood First Aid team or our Search & Rescue team, for which we attended training classes taught by city emergency personnel. Our designated First Aid Station, stocked with everything from bandages to a bottle of vodka (all supplies purchased collectively), is in a garage across the alley from a physican neighbor.

The home of a family with small children is our Special Needs Shelter, where elderly, disabled, or panicky neighbors can rest in the comfort of companionship, and where kids whose parents are on an emergency team can be distracted by games and snacks.

In all, more than 40 families in a two-block area have been participants in our neighborhood’s disaster preparedness plan.

We started almost 10 years ago when then-mayor Greg Nickels cranked up an emergency response program called SDART (Seattle Disaster Aid and Response Teams) and personally crashed summer neighborhood block parties throughout the city to tell residents about it. Not long afterward we asked an SDART trainer to come teach us the skills we needed for dealing with a massive emergency.

The current city preparedness program, overseen by Seattle’s Office of Emergency Management, is called SNAP (Seattle Neighborhoods Actively Prepare). For a thorough review or a first introduction to emergency procedures, Seattle’s Emergency Management home page is a great place to start.

There you’ll find links to instructional handouts including steps that a family and a neighborhood can take to get ready. (Many of my neighbors recommend taking baby steps — a few this week, some more next week — so you don’t feel overwhelmed by long task lists.) SNAP also posts “fun” videos (not entirely false advertising) that demonstrate prudent emergency moves, plus the latest schedule of skills trainings at Magnuson Park and organizational meetings at neighborhood libraries. There are also warnings about dangerous misinformation on the Web.

In a phone interview Debbie Goetz, one of SNAP’s three emergency preparedness training specialists, said, “It’s not breaking news anymore that we have seismic risks. And I hate to say it, but it takes a disaster to spur people to action.” With the heartrending bulletins arriving from Japan she was getting calls from people in neighborhoods such as the Eastlake houseboat community and Wallingford, where organizers had talked last fall about disaster planning but weren’t able to gather neighbors for a planning session at the time.

“Neighborhoods are using this as a teachable moment to get people ready, and we’re out there helping,” Goetz said. “We do neighborhood trainings for groups of 20 or more.”

Goetz stressed the importance of thinking in terms of a pyramid of preparedness levels. People should build the foundation by first prepping themselves, their families, and their own homes. Next they should make plans with neighbors. “In a disaster, your neighbors around you are your very own first responders,” she said. “City services will be inundated.” Farther up the preparedness pyramid (and not yet addressed where I live) are the tasks of organizing different neighborhoods into community hubs and coordinating with the city.

What if you’re downtown when disaster strikes? I asked Goetz about the rumor that in a severe earthquake, shattered window glass from skyscrapers would pile up 10 feet high on Seattle sidewalks and streets. “That’s a snappy factoid,” she chuckled. “I’ve heard five feet, 10 feet, 20. What’s true is that highrises are built to flex, but glass does not, so you might as well expect lots of glass falling.”

The important thing, she said, is to take protective action, and fast. “You’ve got three or four seconds to get somewhere sheltered, so if you’re walking outside among the highrises, go into the lobby of a building immediately. And if you work downtown now, talk with co-workers about what you can do to help each other stay safe and self-sufficient.”

Seattle officials would be wise to heed a Crosscut article published earlier this week that recommends the building of a local Disaster Training Center. Hands-on training in groups is the best way to learn emergency response skills, and such a center would enable far more residents to learn from active simulations than is possible in the current scatter of separate (excellent) classes.

Meanwhile, it’s a good time to spring into action, first to safeguard your own home and then to make sure you and your neighbors will be effective first responders for each other. It might also be time for a neighborhood already organized into teams to schedule refresher sessions.

None of this has to feel like a downer. The pleasure of working on a community project with neighbors tends to lighten forebodings of dark catastrophe. My group might even enjoy the prospect of gathering for an all-hands-on-deck review plus a couple of team practices. We could update our inventory of supplies, too. Maybe we could taste-test some of that emergency vodka.

Arguably good answers to sidebar quiz – but make SNAP your bible: (1) c, e, l, h, g, d, i, k, b, f, a, j (2) c, b, e, d, a (3) b+c+d (4) Ask an out-of-area friend to be the family’s phone contact. (5) When you reset clocks twice a year (every 6 months), pour stored tap water on your plants and refill containers to the brim — no air pocket. (6) Don’t! Always call the gas company for that. (7) Never go near downed wires. (8) False: Always go with a partner; never go alone. (9) a battery radio; flashlights and light sticks (candles can be dangerous); batteries; prescriptions and reserve medications; pet food; bank account numbers; insurance policies; clothes; bedding; baby supplies; etc. (10) six 2-liter bottles, or three gallons.