ten steps in preparing your family in an emergency plan, , page 1

reply to post by lbndhr

Make a PLAN for the event happening while you are at work and the kids in school.

This is so important because many schools already have emergency plans in place in the event of a major disaster/emergency.

The children may be taken to an outside location!

Know where this location is if you are able and plan accordingly.

Covert plans aside from parents knowledge may already be in the works and this to me would drive me insane to be seperated from my young ones in a major event whether natural or manmade.

My family has discussed this but after a tornado I rushed to the school to find out none of them had the nerve to cross the lines and go against directions, instead stayed with their classmates and teachers...

I have one in highschool, one in Jr. High and one in elementary.

The oldest one was to check on his little brothers, he did not.

The middle child was to head for the youngest, he did not.

The youngest did not even notice that his older brothers did not come.

In this situation, everything worked out just fine, but arriving at the school I headed first for the youngest childs class then directly across the hall to the middle, and finally over to the oldest in a different section of the school.

My point here is that "IF" they were to be single filed out to busses and taken to another location the children would have been seperated by age and would not have been able to protect one another or meet at our designated spot a small store across from their school.

Now the store scenario is ONLY in the event they begin to load the kids up to take them away. But I have my doubts that they would follow through if say a Nuck went off or a terror event happened. As I am only 5 minutes away at 70MPH, they would not have a very long wait, and it is possible I could keep them from being relocated.

Now another thing to consider is that if you are at work, you may be instructed to stay in place, to not open doors or leave.

Now what? Are your children in school? At a babysitter/daycare? Or home alone?

So many things to think about and the best laid plans can be diverted so easily in disaster or emergency, no one plan is going to work and to share your plan it would have to have many contingencies.

Too much information can be scary to small children and the already over burdened teens. How to create plans in a way that causes the least amount of stress is what you need to consider first.

There are some really wonderful WWWsites that can help you to introduce these various types of emergencies to your younger children as well as some pretty cool interactive ones for older kids.

I have visited several and the kids have had some fun learning as well. NASA, Several.GOV sites as well as some of the 3 letter agencies can help learn about safety and making your plans according to age appropriate activitiy levels.

Flexibility is something like intuition and common sense, these are qualities that are as important to develop in your children as any best laid plan.