E is for Emergency

Do you ever say, “How much worse can it get,” only to have something follow that with something worse? Well, it has been that type of few weeks. The craziness has even interfered with my weekly blog postings! YIPES! Well, every week something gets experienced, learned, logged. With luck, we get a chuckle out of some aspect of the event and, eventually and usually much later, we can smile about it. Such has been my last few weeks.

It is good to have your routine completely disrupted from time to time. It challenges your ability to response and adapt and change as needed. For example, I had the next few weeks completely planned out, or however relatively they get planned out, when suddenly I had to attend a training session for 3 days. Then throw in taking my mother to the Emergency Room, then the doctor, following up on prescriptions and more phone calls. My iCal became an I Can’t Take this Anymore!

But that is not true. I did take it and adapted as required and moved on.
Now my mother is home and relatively well and my schedule is someone back on track. What this experience reminded me of was that life IS unpredictable. You can plan and cover every base, but that just does not stop “stuff” from happening all over place. Gee, I just sounded like a Seuss book!

I have been talking about preparedness a lot lately. To faculty and staff, to friends and acquaintances. Gentle reminders, mostly, but also pointed conversations about the “what if.” We simply cannot predict what will happen in the next minute or hour or day. We can expect and plan our day around those expectations, but ultimately we react to whatever comes our way.

E is for Emergency, but it is also for Expect. Expect something will not go as planned, or even desired. But with some level of preparedness, we managed to get through the crisis and end up a little battered but not broken and ready to face whatever E comes our way.

Security Depends on Symbolism

This title paraphrases an article I just read about the degree of security given to various national monuments around the United States. However, I wanted to read the article for what I thought it was going to talk about – symbolism and its relationship to emergency situations.

Now, haven’t you gone somewhere and saw the symbol to something and wondered what the heck it was trying to say? Here are some examples...

Giant snowflake. When I lived in Germany, a German friend pointed at the sign and said, “Look out! A giant snowflake!” Agreed.

Semi-truck-trailer (rear view) on its two side wheels with an arching arrow over it. A truck should be tipping over, but, wait, a force field is making it flip back the other way!

A star-burst with a line straight to a person’s eyes. I think that is supposed to warn of a laser beam or some other light source, but it really looks like the person is shooting lasers FROM his eyes.

The flying deer. Why is it flying? Why not running? I remember the excitement I had as a kid because I thought it was the area where one could see Santa’s flying reindeer. Imagine my disappointment...

The kangaroo. Honestly, it looks like it is barely hopping, yet the deer is shown flying through the air. Having grown up in Michigan, I know deer can jump, but I suspect a kangaroo can out-jump a deer any day.

The giant exclamation mark. Angry? Loud? Cursing?

Door Open/Close. This is the most confusing for me. In an elevator there are two buttons, each with two triangles. One has the sides together and the other has the points together. To me, the sides together looks “closed,” and so the two arrows together look “open.” So, guess what happens when someone rushes to get in the elevator that I am in and I reach for the button to hold the door open.... !

The clarity of symbols is extremely important in emergencies. Symbols need to be fluent in every language and culture. Exits and paths need to be clearly marked. Where to find help or activate alarms should not take Indiana Jones or Robert Langdon to figure out. So, if you are in charge of signs for your family or your community, make sure that they make sense to everyone. The last symbol you need in an emergency is ?

Irene Was A Wolf

Already I am reading stories about people who are complaining about preparing for the “Storm of the Century” that didn’t happen. Complaints of the hype surrounding Irene and the extensive evacuations, shutting down public transportation, sandbagging, etc. are coming from residents up and down the Eastern coast.

One local old salt on North Carolina coast claimed that this was nothing but media hype and that he had gone through many worse storms before. All that evacuation was a waste of time and money according to him.

Some would-be politicians even have the gall to joke that Irene was a message from God to Washington lawmakers. Seriously? Over 30 people died, priceless personal objects lost or ruined, homes flooded, bridges and roads were washed away and the damage is estimated at around three billion dollars. Hardly joking material.

The obvious contrast to this is Katrina, where the shout of a wolf’s approach was too little, too late and too unrealistic. People either had nowhere to go, no means to do it, or simply didn’t want to leave their homes. As a result, over 1800 people died and the cost just in dollars was around 8.1 billion. Entire neighborhoods still lay in ruins.

That’s the problem with Emergency Preparedness. When you prepare well and relatively little seems to happen, people think a big deal was made of nothing. [Los Angelinos might well think of the recent shutting down of the heavily traveled 405 freeway for a weekend, or Carmageddon, which resulted in surprisingly little disruption.] However, that is the point. When you prepare well, you expect very little to happen because, well, you prepared well!

And, just for record, our salty North Carolina friend, also had a high-sitting house with plenty of food, water and an emergency generator, so he was well-prepared and was confident because of it.

So, when you hear the notice to prepare, to evacuate, to shelter in place, don’t think of it as a cry for a wolf who never comes. Think of it as a reminder that this is why we prepare. We are ready for that wolf, and even with that huff and puff, he simply can’t blow your house down.

Heart Attack? There’s an App for that...

Yes, if you see someone having a heart attack – or I suppose even if it is you – you can use this app to send a call for help to people around you who know how to perform CPR. This application for iPhone, iPads, and other smart phones and devices was developed by the San Ramon Valley, California, Fire Department folks – and called, obviously, “Fire Department.” While the area and users for this app are relatively small (although San Francisco now has it), it opens the gates to other similar emergency responses.

Apparently, the alert sent via this app call for anyone close enough to walk to the victim and offer their expertise. Additionally, the alerts go to Emergency Response personnel (i.e., EMT’s at the Fire Department) so that the professionals can be launched as well. As an added bonus, the location of the closest AED’s (automated external defibrillators) are displayed to aid responders as well.

As much as people often like to make fun of how people are literally attached to their cell phones, especially the “smart” ones, they are a burgeoning marketful of ideas for all kinds of resources – from the nearest pizza parlor or Ghirardelli Chocolate outlet to life-saving applications.

So, when you start to wonder just what those fire-fighters are doing when not responding to a fire, now you know they are not just testing the latest recipes from Iron Chef. They are programming cool stuff like this. Yeah, they can do all that AND fight fires. Cool, huh?

Get Cranky with your Radio

Cranky? Windup radio? Get it? Yes, you are probably sighing and rolling your eyes, too. Actually with teenagers you begin to believe that people respond that way to everything you say. Well, anything that YOU believe to be clever anyway. It IS the big gift-giving time of the year (seemingly regardless of your religion, or lack thereof...), so why not take this opportunity to get something cool (gadget-wise) AND useful...The crank or wind-up radio!

Recently there have been reviews of a few different models. Generally, they all seem to be pretty good and reasonably priced. Originally these were designed for emergency situations, but they are good general tools to have around – in your car, tool or sewing kit – so you can have a flashlight that works without having to hunt around for fresh batteries. The power comes from you!

Two qualifiers, however. One, cranking means that. You have to crank. The more times around, the more power you generate. If you want time to pass slowly, or get a good arm workout, just try to crank one of these guys for a couple minutes. I was surprised how tired my arm was. Forget the gym - just crank your flashlight for a few minutes a day! Oh, I can just see the Info-mercial...

Second qualifier is that you need to crank them a few times once every few months. I found this out the hard way. I had one sitting for over a year and when I tried to get some light out of it, I nearly wore my arm out getting only a small flicker of light. Future models may improve, but for now that is just another thing to add to your “Quarterly House Duties,” like checking your smoke detector batteries.

Some Crank Devices (I will call them) can do a whole lot more. Most are also flashlights, often with a flashing emergency light, too. I would choose LED types, as they require less energy to work. Mine, an Eton Microlink FR160, has the AM/FM radio, with an additional NOAA weather band. It also an USB cell phone charger (which I have not yet tested), and can be powered with solar energy. It’s a cool green color and cost me $30 a year ago, but I am sure there are others out there that have similar features and could cost less. Especially now that practically every place has everything on sale.

So consider getting a Crank Device soon. For a present, or just because. And, believe it or not, Santa IS watching, and in this case, cranky is OK.