Prepare
All emergencies, even the most major ones, are ultimately local events that need to be responded to by the local community to minimize the initial damage. Look at your preparation from the perspective of yourself as an individual, and that of your family, school, company, and community. Each requires a detailed preparation and plan.
Adequate preparation, and incorporating those preparations into a daily routine that you can maintain, is an important element of being prepared.
To be prepared for an emergency, you must simulate the events as much as possible. This means going through drills seriously as though they were the actual event. A fire drill or an evacuation drill would be an example.
Have a GO (“Get Out”) Kit and a Shelter in Place Kit ready in case of emergencies.
Link for GO Kit
Link for Shelter in Place Kit
An example of Resiliency and Preparation
On the day of the 9/11 attacks, thousands of people were saved due to the resiliency of one man named Rick Rescorla. Rescorla worked for Stanley Morgan, and he had his employees frequently go through drills to prepare for an emergency. When disaster struck, Rescorla and his employees were prepared, and due to that preparation, most of the employees safely escaped the building before it collapsed. Unfortunately, Rick Rescorla died when the building collapsed after running back in to make sure everyone had gotten out. Heroes like him are the resilient among us, and they are they heroes that make the biggest differences when it is time to act.
Use his story as inspiration for why resiliency is so important.
“The key to all situations is mental preparedness. In any life threatening situation, you can only react; your brain does not allow you to formulate a plan and put it into action. When people ‘see their life flash before their eyes,’ it is the mind frantically trying to come up with a prior situation from a life experience that it can use to handle the present scenario. If people do not plan for various life/death situations, they will simply panic when a real life tragedy strikes.”
Sergeant William Gleason
Click the picture below to learn about some of the materials that you should have prepared and ready to go.
Consider implementing them into your GO kit.
