Emergency Preparedness for the Poor

I have a suggestion to help build resilience and increase survival of mega disasters among the poor. Teach basic emergency preparedness and survival to elementary school children. This includes mental and physical preparedness. Do hands-on training integrated with regular classroom subjects. These lessons are no cost / low cost, no tech / low tech skills for making emergency shelter, getting and making safe drinking water, making fire without matches and lighters, etc. All of these can be done with materials salvaged from disaster debris. Encourage students to take these lessons home. Encourage them to teach back to family, friends, and neighbors.

I wrote a paper called EmPrep for the Poor . It is available free on the Internet for individual and educational non-commercial use. (If the link for the paper doesn’t work, visit http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/GECO/pages and scroll down the left column to the section Plan Your Own Rescue and look for the paper. I have prepared several other lessons on emergency preparedness.

Poor people are poor because they lack money. This means they cannot afford to set up emergency kits and stock pile food for disaster preparedness. Many are struggling to put food on the table each day. This paper focuses on the poor who cannot afford to prepare kits ahead of time. The approach is to make use of materials found in the debris. Much may be common sense, but in the wake of a disaster, emotions and stress may limit clear thinking. Teaching practical lessons to children BEFORE the disaster, practicing at school and having “races” to set up a shelter, gather materials to make safe drinking water, etc. can make the difference between life and death. I believe education can be used to empower disaster survivors to reduce the impacts of depression and helplessness.

RTC-TH Emergency Preparedness (EmPrep)
EP-0 Emergency Preparedness: Some Basic Choices
EP-1 Preparing for Emergencies
EP-2 Shelter
EP-3 Water
EP-4 Food
EP-5 Space
EP-6 Severe Storms
EP-9 Lightning
EP-10 Wildfires

In the spirit and tradition of HAM radio, all lessons are free of charge for non-commercial, educational, and individual study provided they are not reproduced for sale, no alternations are made to the lessons, and proper credit is given to the authors. My efforts tend to be grassroots (of, for, and by the people) using community-based education methods on a people-to-people basis. When it comes to saving lives and making the world a better place, the spirit of volunteerism and HAM radio should be number one.

Please share this information with others you feel may benefit from it.

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. Thank you for your time and appreciation.

 

interesting concept, not sure i completely "get" the "poor" centric angle, as disaster affects everyone.

nicely done material

looking forward to looking at your material in detail

 

I found this material absolutely interesting. It's been a great idea to share it with the hams here.

Thank you very much! 73's

 

They would be better off in real life with teaching them Morality, Manners , Personal Hygiene and Social Skills. But those virtues are looked down upon by so many as oppressive when in fact they give them better odds for an improved life.

 

Poor folks usually can't even afford minimal emergency equipment such as flashlights, food, blankets, etc. From over 32 years as a volunteer firefighter and paramedic I can attest to the need for ANYTHING that helps these people out, emergency or not.

 

I was going to comment, but, never mind, you wouldn't understand it.

 

The old saying goes, "if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you ... never mind, you might not understand it.

 

Ummm... yeah... but... why do they lack money?

The reasons that there are poor people in any society are way, way, way more complex than that simple statement.

If you handed a poor person $100,000 they would be poor again in short order.

Still, it's admirable that you're doing what you can to help them.

 

Thanks for your comment. Yes, I admit, the simplistic comment is prone to errors as are most generalizations. Poor decision making is somewhere close to the core of being poor as well.

The key point I was alluding to based on my observations in SE Asia is that many living in poverty struggle to get basic necessities for daily life-- food and clean water. At that level they don't have the funds or even the place to safely stockpile emergency supplies.

Several years ago at and international conference on disaster preparedness, the disaster response representatives were asked what they did in their respective countries to prepare for floods. The Thai representstive's comment caught me off guard (I was living in Thailand at the time). He said "we don't do anything. People who live in flood prone areas know it floods every year. They already know what to do. If we print educational materials for them, it would be a waste because they wouldn't read it anyway."

The next year Thailand was hit by nationwide flooding that stretched the disaster responders to the limit or near breaking. In many areas when people were told to evacuate, many had no idea where they were supposed to go.

I am biased in that being a teacher, my first reaction is try to use knowledge and information to improve things. In my rural village, I was able to get village head man and elementary school director to get the 8 teachers to integrate emergency preparedness training with the general ed curriculum because I took the math and science lessons mandated by the education Department and applied it to emergency preparedness lessons and the mandated scouting and girl guide programs. The teachers liked the fact they didn't have to do extra work and actually got to reinforce the classroom lessons by using the emprep
activities in place of extra tutoring.

Thanks again for your comment and encouragement.

 

And I suppose that the people don't expect the government to help them, as opposed to here in the US where it's a given that the government is expected to help (and indeed they should), but it would seem that many of the poor in the US actually have no incentive to improve their living situation because of all the social handout programs. (not that helping in an emergency is really a 'handout' per se). I'm digressing a bit, but there's a parallel I think.

Why should anyone (even the not so poor) do anything to prepare for emergencies if the government is going to do it for them?

"It's complicated"!

 

Oh, my.

 

Sheesh. In the context of helping poor people survive a disaster, it doesn’t matter how or why they are poor. That’s an entirely different topic and one best discussed in the political forum.

 

I think you should expand your target audience to include the cheap.

 

I volunteer at a food bank and I see the chronically poor for generations driving nicer and newer cars than I do and loading up on free food, often 2-3 adults per vehicle plus kids. Each adult gets a load. Plus about $1000 in fuel assistance plus 25% or more off the electric bill.

Housing is subsidized, the kids get free food at school.

What am I missing here?

 

Interesting document, with much good advice. Your characterisation of "survival" being the first four levels of Maslow's hierarchy caught me off-guard. I'd have said the first two were the survival levels, self-esteem and belonging kicking in only after the immediate crisis has passed (although I acknowledge that it is much more interconnected than Maslow suggests).