Download or read book Emergency Preparedness for Apartment Communities written by Virginia Nicols and published by . This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You recognize your apartment community is vulnerable to a disaster. You've put in the hours to complete the CERT course (Community Emergency Response Team) or maybe another training. But in a big emergency, people around you won't know how to protect themselves, much less how to help their neighbors - including you! That's the situation we found ourselves in - and we weren't ready to accept it. So, we gathered up our energy, our marketing skills and our experience as trainers and began what has turned out to be a 15+ year experiment at improving emergency preparedness in our community. This book (and the others in the Series) details what we have learned so far about building a neighborhood emergency response team. Our goal is to share it to help others build their own neighborhood teams. Of course, every community is different. And while we approach building a neighborhood team in three broadly defined steps, we try to include many, many ways to go about getting there.The three steps are simple: (1) Prepare yourself and your family (2) Get CERT training and build a core group around you (3) Build, document and practice your neighborhood "plan" for credibility and consistency.Sounds simple, but there are many choices to be made along the way. Some of the resources we've included that we hope will make your choices easier: * Using the advantages - and watching out for the disadvantages - of your unique setting (multi-family dwelling, high-rise or low-rise, mobilehome park, single family residential neighborhood)* Lists of emergency supplies for survival kits, evacuation kits, pet survival kits, etc.* Eight priorities for personal preparations* MANY suggestions for holding meetings that will recruit new members and keep them involved (We have been involved in hundreds of such meetings over the years!)* List of emergency items your neighborhood team members will want * 7 things about your building/location to investigate before you even start building the team* Step by step to creating the "organization chart" and filling in the blanks with neighbors' names* Sample charts, communications matrix, meeting invitations* Legal alerts and warnings* "Real life" short stories of things we tried that didn't work so well!Finally, we admit to some of our frustrations with the process -- and we try to remind enthusiastic leaders about what to expect from volunteers!There are no guarantees in this book. Emergencies by their very definition are unexpected and unknown. What we do know, though, is that whatever preparations you and your neighbors make, and whatever planning you do, gives you a better chance of keeping that emergency from becoming a disaster. This book will help get you started.