Friday, Sep. 03, 2010

David Ofwono: Safety awareness

Last week, I talked about the most essential part of anyone's personal preparedness: emergency communication.

This week, I would like to address some of the simple things you can do to lessen the impact of a disaster.

We have all heard about keeping our important documents in a safety deposit box or a fire-proof safe. Things like your insurance papers, wills, title and deeds, passports, etc. One easy way to safeguard your important documents is to scan them electronically and store them on a flash drive. You can take it a step further by sending these electronic documents to a relative or friend who lives in another area or state. Or, you can store them with a service that specializes in this type of thing.

The one thing almost everybody forgets to protect and copy is family pictures. That picture of great grandmother, your long-gone uncle, pictures of you as a child or your children can never be replaced. Take the time to scan them electronically and save them in the same manner as I described above. Also, do not forget to scan or obtain an electronic copy of your medical prescriptions.

I also recommend finding out where evacuation routes are for your community and where it plans on setting up evacuation centers and shelters. Every community is required by law to have an Emergency Operations Plan, or EOP, where this information can be found. This plan is available for anyone in the community to view and many communities post their EOP online.

The emergency services coordinator or manager for your city is responsible for the preparation and maintenance of your community's EOP and that is usually the city manager. The city manager, of course, has staff to assist him in the preparation and updating of the EOP.

When a disaster strikes is not the time to try to learn where you are supposed to go and how you are supposed to get there.

Dave Ofwono is the director of First On Compliance, Inc.