Take 5— Three Rs- Be Disaster Ready

 

 

“Make a list of those things [that you might need]. And once you’ve done that, you’re a long way to understanding how to support each other because you know who has what and where to go get it when you need it in a hurry.” -Nancy Brown, PhD

 

“I want to build a culture of preparedness where conversations around preparedness, actually preparing, and taking the steps necessary is just part of what we do and not a weird thing on the side.” -Alma Bowen

 

“The biggest thing that I thought of when I was coming back from the fire is… to make electronic files to put on a USB drive.— That stuff, the FEMA check. Super important!” -Josh Farrell

 

 

It’s important to be prepared for a disaster, but it’s also important to keep in mind that being prepared means being able to respond quickly. If we think we have time, that’s when we really don’t have time. The inevitable truth about disaster is that it does not discriminate nor does it show mercy— lives are at stake, our lives! 

Disaster preparedness may seem like a lot of work, but it’s worth doing. And it’s not just about keeping our families safe; it’s about helping our community safe too. In this episode, our guests discuss practical steps and tips on how to be prepared for a disaster as a community, as a family, and as individuals. They also share what must-have items to put in our go bags, how to prepare for when communication fails, how to keep documentation for claiming financial aid after a disaster, and how to work together as a community to meet the needs of each member. Tune in and hear from Sonoma County’s Community Preparedness Program Manager Nancy Brown, Nuestra Comunidad Founder Alma Bowen, and Citizen Prepper Joshua Farrell. 

 

 

Highlights:

01:33: Season 2 Ep 2— How to Help Communities Prepare and Respond to Disaster with Nancy Brown, PhD

03:57: Season 2 Ep 6— How To Serve Vulnerable Communities with Alma Bowen

09:40: Season 1 Ep 2&3— How to Prepare: Citizen Prepper Part 1&2 with Josh Farrell

 

Tweets:

Nobody wants to be caught off guard when a disaster strikes. So how do we prepare for it— as a community, as a family, and as individuals? Hear practical steps from @AfterTheFireUSA CEO @JenGrayThompson, Sonoma County’s Community Preparedness Program Manager Nancy Brown, CEO of @teamNC707 Alma Bowen, and Citizen Prepper, Joshua Farrell. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #NorthBay #podcast #wildfire #disaster #AfterTheFire #newseason #Season3 #HowToDisaster #Take5  #DisasterPreparedness #communication #documentation #gobag #DisasterResilienceMinded #CulturalPreparedness #CitizenPrepper

 

Quotes: 

03:45: “Make a list of those things [that you might need]. And once you’ve done that, you’re a long way to understanding how to support each other because you know who has what and where to go get it when you need it in a hurry.” -Nancy Brown, PhD

04:16: “Disaster preparedness is not particularly laboring, extensive, or difficult.” -Alma Bowen

05:23: “Being prepared is going to be a cultural shift that needs to happen.” -Alma Bowen

05:38: “I want to build a culture of preparedness where conversations around preparedness, actually preparing, and taking the steps necessary is just part of what we do and not a weird thing on the side.” -Alma Bowen

09:13: “The dream is to have communities within themselves that can help one another because during disasters, that’s who you’re going to rely on.”  -Alma Bowen

09:56: “The biggest thing that I thought of when I was coming back from the fire is… to make electronic files to put on a USB drive.— That stuff, the FEMA check. Super important!” -Josh Farrell

12:43: “A couple of walkie-talkies—  and we have a way to communicate without cell phone towers.” -Josh Farrell

 

Meet Nancy:

Nancy BrownNancy Brown is the Community Preparedness Program Manager for Sonoma County’s Department of Emergency Management. Originally from Southern California, Nancy earned a Master of Science degree at California State University. Nancy completed her Ph.D. in Emergency Management at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. This interdisciplinary study combines the relatively new disaster science field with hospitality industry studies, community resilience, and organizational resilience studies. Her long-term objectives include the continued development of pragmatic ways to build disaster resilience that engage communities and businesses in a systemic way – resulting in a culture of resilience.

 

Meet Alma:

Photo of Alma BowenAlma Bowen is a life-long Sonoma County resident with deep ties to the community. Currently, Alma is the Founder & Executive Director of ‘Nuestra Comunidad, a Sonoma County-based non-profit focused on disaster preparedness for all, with an emphasis on under-served communities including our Spanish-speaking population and low-income seniors. Prior to starting ‘Nuestra Comunidad’ Alma served Sonoma County for 18 years as a highly distinguished, 9-1-1 Emergency Services Dispatcher. The 2017 wildfires taught us that disaster preparedness is a shared responsibility. Alma worked the night of the fires and has first-hand knowledge of how disaster preparedness can make the difference between life and loss. Now, Alma is out in our community promoting & teaching the importance of disaster preparedness.

 

Meet Joshua:

Joshua FarrellJoshua Farrell always makes sure that they have a to-go bag in case of emergency. But when he and his family moved to Sonoma, his preparedness was challenged to a serious degree. Today, he takes all the lessons learned from the 2017 wildfire to level up his game and be a Citizen Prepper, always ready for any disaster. osh Farrell 

 

 

Transcription:

Jennifer Gray Thompson: Welcome to Season 3 of the How to Disaster Podcast where we help you recover, rebuild and reimagine. During this season, we will be releasing Take 5 shorter episodes that highlight some of our past guests speaking about similar issues, themes, topics. We wanted to do this so that perhaps would be easier if you only have a few minutes but you wanted to connect with these focused episodes and guests that you could condense all their messages into one smaller bite sized piece. One of the things that we know about disaster is that we really have to meet people where they’re at. And sometimes, where you’re at is you only have five minutes. We’re very excited for the third season. We’ve got great guests, wonderful information and content about how to actually help get your community through to the other side, so thank you for joining us. 

And if you wish to find out more, please visit our homepage at afterthefireusa.org. Consider giving us a like or follow if you liked this podcast, we really appreciate it, and thank you for your time.

 

From Season 2, Episode 2: How to Help Communities Prepare and Respond to Disaster. Nancy Brown, PhD, the Community Preparedness Program Manager in Sonoma County

 

Nancy Brown:  

I have all the regular things, I have mylar blanket, I have food and water. I don’t like that prepackaged little way for food, I have real food. I have food and water that allows me maybe a day and a half, two days because I don’t want my pack too heavy. I want to be able to carry it. I have a full change of clothing including an extra sweatshirt and a pair of tennis shoes. I have aspirin because I get headaches when I get stressed out. So that’s me. I have contact lenses because I can’t see a thing and I’m always worried that there’s going to be some instance where I don’t have my contact lenses or I lose one. And now, I can’t see anything. So I have like three pairs of contact lenses in there to make sure that no matter what happens, I can still see because that’s critical to me. And then I have my flashlights and my batteries, all the regular stuff that you think you might need. I think one of the things that’s really important, of course, is that radio to make sure that you have that redundancy and you don’t have to go out to your car and turn it on and use your battery for your radio to listen to that, that you can listen to it in your home if your powers gone out to be able to find out what’s happening.

 

“Make a list of those things [that you might need]. And once you’ve done that, you’re a long way to understanding how to support each other because you know who has what and where to go get it when you need it in a hurry.” -Nancy Brown, PhD

 

Think if you were listening to this and you were like, God, I really want to get together with my neighbors. My advice would be, get together with your neighbors and just start by figuring out who has what, just start there. How many of you have a generator? How many of you know how to operate or have a saw if there’s a tree in the road. How many of you have big freezers? How many of you have barbecues? How many of you have first aid skills? Just take a poll and see what you guys have. And then the other thing, which I think is key also, how many of you are going to need help? What’s your challenge? I don’t drive or my cars in the garage, whatever these things are. What is your challenge? I have medication that needs to be refrigerated, who can help me with that? Make a list of those things. And once you’ve done that, you’re a long way to really understanding how to support each other because you know who has what and where to go to get it when you need it in a hurry.

 

From Season 2, Episode 6: How to Serve Vulnerable Communities. The CEO and Founder of Nuestra Comunidad, Alma Bowen.

 

Alma Bowen: Even the simple things, and that was another thing that’s so striking is that disaster preparedness is not particularly laboring, extensive or difficult. But yet, so many people, even now, I still get shocked. Three years into doing this work, I’m out in the community even during COVID. I remained out in the community as much as I could doing outreach around COVID. But also, it’s continuing disaster preparedness, awareness and outreach. And people, we’re for fires in Sonoma County, and some people are still not prepared. They don’t have a communication plan. They don’t have a disaster plan. They don’t have an evacuation plan. They don’t have their go bag. They don’t have their stay home box. Like all the essential elements, they still don’t have it. So how do we encourage, motivate, or even help keep community members from point A knowing that they need to do this to point B and actually doing it. I believe that takes continued engagement, and that building relationships. And also the bigger picture, one of our hashtags is disaster resilience minded, that’s one of them, and also a culture of preparedness. So I believe that becoming prepared, being prepared, it’s going to be a cultural shift that needs to happen. And so I do a lot of work at schools, everything from kindergarten up to high school with different levels of disaster and 911 awareness. But I think if we start getting it in when they’re children, I want to build a culture of preparedness where conversations around preparedness actually prepare. Taking the steps necessary is just part of what we do, and so we don’t think of it as this weird thing on the side, we think of it as just something we do.

 

“Disaster preparedness is not particularly laboring, extensive, or difficult.” -Alma Bowen

 

And so this woman named Sue said: “We’re afraid. A lot of us survived, obviously the Tubbs fire, but some of us were displaced at that time and ended up here. Nobody’s helping us. We want information.” I went in and did a series of disaster preparedness presentations with disaster plans, and what started happening was pretty, pretty cool. So I did a presentation. The first group of about 15 seniors showed up for the first one. I had a series of six scheduled out the next series. The next time I did it, it was going to be the six same series six times to make sure everybody had a time slot they couldn’t attend. The second one, everybody that came for the first one came back again even though they’d already covered the information. And then we had maybe another 50 new people. So then, we had 30. The next one, the room was full. The next one, people kept coming back. But then beyond that, what happened is that they all did their plants. We’ve talked about communications, I helped them sign up to alerts and understand alerting. We talked about people that have medications that need to be refrigerated, things that we can do, how do we work our way around that for PS when our powers are shut off for the PSPS. 

 

“Being prepared is going to be a cultural shift that needs to happen.” -Alma Bowen

 

But then, what happened is, I had a core group of about 12 to 15 seniors, this is 70 year old plus seniors that wanted to form their own version of disaster preparedness, like their version of code, which is citizens organized to prepare for emergencies, but they call their ROPE, Residents Organized to Prepare for Emergencies. So every week, I would meet with them. They had a board, they had a committee. They formed this all themselves, I just facilitated it. We had a list of priorities of things we’re going to cover from how to use a fire extinguisher. So I was pulling in the fire department to come in and help me train. But these ladies and a couple of gentlemen, all 70 plus, became so driven and not only keeping themselves safe, but their neighbor safe. And making sure that everybody would be able to get out of that building. And we were addressing, if there is an emergency, because a lot of them don’t drive. So they were like, how are we going to get out of here? They’re not providing public transportation so we were looking at what are you going to do, but it was incredible to see. And to me, it speaks to the whole culture of preparedness within this little community that was one time scared, anxious, anxiety ridden became this empowered community that had a plan. We’re working together on helping each other. Now, that is fantastic. 

 

“I want to build a culture of preparedness where conversations around preparedness, actually preparing, and taking the steps necessary is just part of what we do and not a weird thing on the side.” -Alma Bowen

 

That’s the dream right there is to have communities within themselves that can help one another. Because during disasters, for 72 hours, that’s who you’re going to rely on. If you cannot get out of your area, your neighbors, your friends, those are the people that are actually going to help you. And so to see this in this older community and to see their confidence level go from point A to point B was amazing.

 

From Season 1, Episodes 2 and 3: How to Prepare as a Citizen Prepper. Joshua Farrell, a private citizen in Los Angeles.

 

Joshua Farrell: That’s probably the biggest thing that I thought of when I was coming back from the fire and I did this immediately even before I got it to go back. I thought about this all the way back because we didn’t really have the documents that we had from my mom. We’re going through all this paperwork, trying to pull stuff out of old files like house insurance and things that are important that I didn’t know at the time what was important and what was not. So when I came back, I did a bunch of research, and I started to make electronic files to put on a USB drive. It’s really simple. Again, you can have the ball game on. Obviously, I said ball games three times. So obviously, I’m a Giants fan, and watch and love baseball. So baseball lends itself to having, you can multitask a lot. You just start to copy some of this stuff onto a USB drive. That stuff the FEMA check, super important. I didn’t know about this. If your house burns down and you don’t have all your bank information, maybe you don’t remember your routing number, maybe you don’t know your account number, the FEMA checks are just a voided check, but you’re gonna present that to FEMA. They’re usually on the spot pretty quickly. But if you don’t have that information, that’s going to create a lot of lag time before you can get the financial support that they offer. So that’s one of the many things I have on my USB drive. Do you want me to mention what I have on the USB drive? 

 

“The biggest thing that I thought of when I was coming back from the fire is… to make electronic files to put on a USB drive.— That stuff, the FEMA check. Super important!” -Josh Farrell

 

Jennifer Gray Thompson: Sure. Yeah, it goes through it. 

Joshua Farrell: It’s not overkill. I basically have our healthcare information. So copies of mine and my wife’s, (inaudible) cards, to actually when I get to the bags, that’ll be more important. But I have backup prescription glasses in our bags, but I do have our prescription information on our USB drive. But my wife’s like, you think you’re gonna go get new glasses in the middle of a disaster? Why would you have to have the prescription? So good point. So I have those. I have copies of our licenses on the USB drive, our passports, just stuff that you may need. Our cat information. If you have a pet, pet things are pretty big, and I didn’t really realize any of this till after that disaster. My mom doesn’t have any pets so we didn’t need to worry about that. But having the kind of vaccination, proof of vaccination. In California, they have some pretty strict rules. Your cat can’t really go into a shelter in some situations if you don’t have the proper documentation. So just take that documentation that you get from your vet when you go there, make a copy and have it ready for you to backup phone numbers. Big time. I can’t remember anyone’s phone number so I have it all backed up on a PDF. My mom’s number, my friend’s number, all emergency numbers separate on a USB drive.

 

“A couple of walkie-talkies—  and we have a way to communicate without cell phone towers.” -Josh Farrell

 

This might be considered a little overkill, but it didn’t cost a lot. I did it a while ago, but it’s just a couple of walkie talkies. Okay. So now, the reason I did this was I wasn’t like, oh, my god, we’re gonna have to run into the hills and so I’m gonna buy all terrain walkie talkies. I think this cost me, it’s a Midland or whatever, and it was like 50 bucks for two of them. You got to charge your stuff, and you can charge it in the car, and batteries that work on batteries, as well as a charged battery. But more importantly, is the cell phone towers as we know which happened up in Santa Rosa, those burn communication was really bad. No one’s really going to be on the other end of this except my wife. And if she and I are in cars following each other stuck in traffic for hours trying to get out of town., we have a way to communicate with each other. If she needs to walk down to the store or go to the end of the street to check on somebody, we have a lot of elderly people in our neighborhood who we would check on for sure, she can take one and I can have one, and we have a way to communicate without cell phone towers.

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