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MISSOURI DIVISION |
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEPTEMBER 2000 POST EARTHQUAKE HIGHWAY RESPONSE AND RECOVERY SEMINAR HELD IN ST. LOUIS MISSOURI
NEIGHBORHOOD PREPAREDNESS BY DEANNA ADAM
MR. WILKERSON: Our next speaker is Deana Adam. Deana is with the St. Louis area chapter of the American Red Cross. She is also a full-time employee there and her specialty is community education and outreach and works very closely helping the communities become very prepared and very aware of what they need to do.
MS. ADAM: Thank you. We work a lot with FEMA and SEMA. We try to get out a lot into the community, make sure that families do have a plan, make sure that you discuss the plan, and make sure that you do have an outside contact. If you work in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and you live in St. Charles, you need to make sure you have somebody on that side of the river that's going to be able to take care of your kids and take care of your pets until you can get back across that bridge. The same is true if you live over in Illinois.
We try to talk to people and make sure that they have thought out these, not only just their immediate family plan, but what's going to happen to their neighbors. We have several different programs where you can work with your neighbors and your neighborhood. That may be the group that you're depending on for the next week or so after a big disaster, after a big earthquake.
There are some subdivisions that have one-way out or two-ways out maybe, and if one of those is blocked, you're pretty much on your own. As important as everyone thinks they are, those emergency response people are not going to get into those individual neighborhoods right away. It could be days or it could be weeks.
I know you're looking at bridges and roads and you're looking at the big picture for the entire area.
So we want neighborhoods to be able to work together. Do you know who's in your neighborhood? In my parents' old neighborhood where they lived forever, you knew who had medical experience; you knew who used to be an electrician in a former life. But with the mobile society that we live in now, we're lucky to know who lives next door. And those are the people that we are going to be counting on to get through some of these really tough times.
So it really helps to have a neighborhood plan. If you have a neighborhood association that meets on a regular basis, if you have a neighborhood watch, any time that your group gets together, Fourth of July picnics, talk about how you-all are going to react as a neighborhood if we have a big disaster -- when we have a big disaster.
You will be counting on each other. There are drills that you can do. We have plans we've seen from the city of Seattle that have been very, very successful where people work together. Even if you have an elderly person that thinks they can't do anything, maybe someone has to watch the children while the moms and dads go out and try and clean up a little bit. That elderly person can watch the kids. There is a lot of things each person can do, but you need to think about those things in advance.
You do need to talk to your neighbors and see how they're going to react, whether you're going to put up yellow, red and green placards in your house to signify that you-all are okay, that you-all need some help. Those things, again, need to be worked out in advance as part of the whole advance-planning program that we push. Phil talked a little bit about the disaster supply kit. Red Cross has a brochure that has very extensive suggestions about what you might want put in that disaster-supply kit. You can get that from any local Red Cross chapter and share them with your neighbors, share them with your employees, make sure that your family has one of these things put together. If you don't have water, you're not going to have anything to drink and we know that's probably the most important thing to have at the very beginning.
During the earthquake, when I talk to children, a lot of third grade classes within the St. Louis area, I ask them, what do you do, or how many of you know what to do when an earthquake strikes, and most of them have no idea. They don't think we have an earthquake problem here. And I know we're talking third grade, but they're old enough in third grade to react correctly, to react quickly.
So we go through a whole program of movers and shakers and we try and teach them what to do so they can go home and teach it to their family. This gives the child to act as teacher for once and tell mom and dad something that mom and dad may have learned a long time ago but have forgotten. Or maybe they're new to this area and they really don't think that we live in an earthquake zone. This gives them a chance to kind of go home and be a teacher for a while. Lets them practice where they go, where do they get under quickly, a kitchen table, a desk in their own bedroom or something. We really do encourage children to know what to do because when you reach the children you do reach the family.
A lot of people will put candles in a kit thinking that's a good thing because they don't take up a lot of room and they last a long time. For an earthquake you do not want to put candles in a disaster supply kit. If there are any aftershocks you're going to tip a candle over and start a fire. You can fall asleep while the candle is still burning, again fires. Fires follow in the aftermath of earthquakes for so many different reasons. A lot of publications advocate putting candles in but it's just not a good idea.
We have seen some really nice examples at different SEMA -- not FEMA, of course, but SEMA type meetings where they've got some candles, so that's not a good idea.
You do need to check with utilities. We've talked to the local gas company here and they want us to be very careful to tell people that just because we have an incident of any type, that's not reason to just run and automatically turn the gas off. You need to make sure that you can smell the gas, know exactly how to turn it off because only a qualified Laclede Gas type person can come and turn it back on. There is no point in turning it off if there is no problem.
If you do have any questions and you have groups of people that want to hear earthquake preparedness, there are some programs from the Red Cross. We have one called "Living With Earthquakes," it's a video and a workbook. We can kind of do an employee in service type meeting. But it gives the Red Cross a chance to come out and talk about it. You can call your local chapter and set something up with them and we´ll be glad to come out and help you educate your employees. Thank you.
MR. WILKERSON: Thank you, Deana. How many of you participate in your neighborhood association, or if you have one, you participate? I know we have one. We have a thing that to me is somewhat of a nuisance, but they keep track of the residents in the neighborhood, they want to know who you are, what you do. But on the other side, I know who's a contractor; I know who's a fireman that may be a street or two away from me. A good thing to be participating in if your neighborhood doesn't have those. It allows you to become better prepared as citizens rather than what you do as a professional.
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