# 8119
When it comes to making forecasts for the coming year, I generally default to the late Baltimore Sun columnist Jack Germond’s incredibly droll (and 100% safe) New Year’s Eve prediction he issued a couple of decades ago that, `There will be a flood somewhere.’
Not being afraid to go out on a limb, I go a little further, saying:
There will be a flood – or some other disaster - and some people will suffer unnecessarily because they weren’t adequately prepared.
Shocking, I know.
But despite a nearly constant barrage of preparedness messaging from governments, organizations, and humble bloggers like myself, half of all American families haven’t even taken the most basic of disaster preparedness steps, and I’d guess fewer than 10% are really well prepared for a serious event.
Last year, an American Red Cross poll (Coastal Hurricane Preparedness May 2013), found only about half the respondents had an evacuation plan, 1/3rd have no home disaster supplies, and only about half reported having a family communications plan.
During the first decade of promoting their National Preparedness Month (NPM), FEMA and READY.Gov have seen some signs of progress (see graphic below).
The goal of this yearly campaign is to foster a culture of national preparedness, and to encourage everyone to plan and be prepared to deal with an event where they can go at least 72 hours without electricity, running water, local services, or access to a supermarket.
Still, far too many American families and businesses remain poorly equipped to deal with a major disaster. And that knowledge keeps emergency planners up at night.
For those who equate prepping with sensationalized cable TV and Internet `Doomsday-type’ preppers, rest assured we aren’t talking about digging a bunker, laying in a 10-year supply of freeze dried foods, or stockpiling guns and ammo.
But disruptions that follow hurricanes, tornado outbreaks, floods, and other natural disasters can potentially last for days or even weeks, and so – if you are able to do so - being prepared for 10 days to 2 weeks makes a good deal of sense (see When 72 Hours Isn’t Enough).
In 2012, in Making The Most Of The Day Before Tomorrow, I highlighted a very effective graphic from Ready.gov that shows the `day before disaster’ for all 50 states. The date when it was still not too late to prepare.
Click through to the interactive map, to see each state’s date with destiny.
If you click on California, for example, you’ll get:
You get the idea.
The takeaway point is, you never know whether today is the day before your disaster . . .
We’ll be covering a lot of preparedness topics during 2014 – along with our regular litany of emerging infectious diseases – because in a world as crowded, complex, and interconnected as ours, bad things are sure to happen.
And among those `bad things’ is the potential for seeing epidemics or even a pandemic.
But the smart money says, you shouldn’t prepare for a specific emergency or disaster, but instead create an `All Hazards approach’ to preparedness, one that will leave you in good stead no matter what comes down the pike.
To get you started, I would invite you to visit:
FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm
READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/
AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/
If you are on Twitter, I would recommend you follow @FEMA, @CraigatFEMA, @NHC_Atlantic, @NHC_Pacific and @ReadyGov.
And lastly, in NPM13: The Greatest Prep Of All, I wrote about what I consider to be the most important preparedness step you can take – having, and being, a disaster buddy. Cultivating a network of family and friends to whom you can turn for help in a disaster, to who can turn to you for aid, if they need it.
Because - while I can’t predict what disaster will happen, or when, or even where – its a safe bet that in 2014 hundreds of thousands of people around the world will find themselves wishing they were better prepared in the midst of a crisis.
With a little bit of pre-planning and effort, you needn’t be one of them.
You can use this link to read earlier NPM preparedness posts on this blog.
