Would you be prepared in the event of a disaster?
Ken Devol reached out to Nurridin Ziyadinov, executive director of the Red Cross’s Northern California Chapter to find out what the Red Cross does, and what the Red Cross recommends regular people do, to prepare for the unexpected.
Ken started off by asking, after a disaster like a wildfire where people need to be evacuated, how does the Red Cross pick an evacuation site?
Here are highlights from their conversation. You can also listen at the top of the page.
Interview Highlights
On how Red Cross evacuation locations are chosen
Well, we choose the evacuation locations based on consultation with our local emergency managers and sheriff's office and Health and Human Services in coordination with all the agencies. One of the challenges that you'll probably see is that we don't know where the next disaster will hit. So pre-disasters, we usually go ahead and have agreements with the local shelters, local hotels and dormitory facilities to make sure our partners know that when needed, we might call them and ask them to open up their doors for us.
On how COVID-19 changes how the Red Cross will handle evacuations
So one of the things that we know during the COVID that is different is in order for us to follow CDC guidelines and to make sure our staff and our clients are safe and comfortable, our first choice of going about housing at this moment is hotels. So that is different than what we would do on a normal basis. In a pre-COVID environment we would house them in a common group sheltering, but because of COVID we will be housing our clients preferred, our first route of option is hotels and motels and second is non congregate dormitory shelters where, again, following the six-foot distance, safety, social distancing, and to make sure our clients are safe.
On if hotels and motels aren’t available
We know in our North State, there might not be a lot of hotels and motels that are available for us. In some communities, for example, and we might be in a smaller community like in Siskiyou County where there's not a lot of hotels, but we have to to go through, you know, our last resort, congregate sheltering, even then we would follow our safety protocol, we would have a screening before every client comes in, following our public health officials.
We work with Apollo Health nurses and the Red Cross nurses to make sure each client gets a temperature taken, gets a screening questions, and gets the answers. Also, when they do come in into the facility, they probably, one of the things that folks will witness is the distance and it will not be the traditional Red Cross shelter. And each client will have a significant space around them to make sure they are following the distancing and social distancing protocol. So there will be a lot of different actions and the precautionary moves that we do take to keep our clients safe and that is based on — even to the feeding as well. You know we will probably have very limited snacking and all of that. That is, again to make sure there's less contamination and there's all the sanitizing that our volunteers will continue doing, you know, face mask, all of that will be followed.
On how to prepare for a disaster
The best time to prepare is right now. And I'm sure our partners in Cal Fire, every single emergency management, they'd be preaching the same thing. But it's the basic three steps that every individual can make: that's make a plan, get a kit, and stay informed.
When we say make a plan, we know things are different if there's a house fire that the Red Cross responds to the most, and we responded to over 13,000 house fires across the nation just since February of this year. In those fires, what is your escape plan from your house? Where do you meet? Who do you call? So that's part of the making a plan. And especially in a COVID environment, making a plan — where do you go where it's safe, who do you contact is very, very important.
And getting a kit. I personally, in my emergency kit, I've already tapped into it a little bit and I am working on the same thing — replenishing. And also, this brings in the new things that we need to put into our emergency care — that's if we can, put a hand sanitizer, hand soap, face mask if that's possible. So all these things that we do keep on a normal basis in our kits, we should add the things to keep us safe from this virus as well. So as you make your kit, as you build your kit with your families, ensure that all of those supplies are prepared.
And we like to say make sure you have six P's. You have your plastics, that's your debit card, your credit card, whatever that is, your pills, make sure they're up to date. Make sure you know, even if you do not have a bottle of your pills themselves, almost all of us have smartphones now, just take a picture of them if possible, so that if you get evacuated for a significant period of time, there's a possibility to get them refilled. And make sure you have three days' worth of supplies and that's why you need to worry about. People, pets, plastics, pills, and just maintain that.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the “play” button to listen to the entire interview.
