Opinion: Emergency preparedness is critical
By Tracy Franklin
Are you prepared for an emergency? South Lake Tahoe has developed a 12-month emergency preparedness tool to help you prepare.
As part of the city’s continued initiative to increase communications, we will be offering a 12 part monthly series throughout the year highlighting emergency preparedness. Use these tools to prepare yourself for an emergency. More information is available online.
Emergency Preparedness—Month 1 – Create a Family Disaster Plan
Your family needs a plan that tells everyone: where to meet if you have to evacuate; who you’ve identified as an out-of-state “family contact”; how to get emergency information in your community; and how to take care of your family pets.
When preparing for an emergency, plan on having enough supplies to get you and your family through at least the first 72 hours. After a major emergency, there’s a good chance that traditional emergency response teams will be too busy to take care of you and your family. You need to prepare your home and neighborhood.
· Stock up on at least a three-day supply of food, water, clothes, medical supplies and other necessary equipment for everyone in your family.
· Make sure everyone knows where to find them.
· Decide where and when to reunite your family should you are apart when a disaster strikes.
· Choose a person outside the immediate area to contact if family members are separated. Long distance phone service will probably be restored sooner than local service. Do not use the phone immediately after a major emergency.
· Know the policies of the school or daycare center your children attend. Make plans to have someone pick them up if you are unable to get to them.
· If you have a family member who does not speak English, prepare an emergency card written in English indicating that person’s identification, address and any special needs such as medication or allergies. Tell that person to keep the card with him/her at all times.
· Conduct Earthquake: Duck, Cover and Hold drills every six months with your family.
· Practice Stop, Drop and Roll drills for fire, as well as emergency exit drills in the house regularly.
· Know the safest place in each room because it will be difficult to move from one room to another during an earthquake or explosion.
· Locate the shutoff valves for water, gas and electricity. Learn how to shut off the valves before an emergency. If you have any questions, call your utility company. Remember not to shut off utility valves unless directed to do so by your utility company.
· Make copies of vital records and keep them in a safe deposit box in another city or state. Make sure your originals are stored safely.
· Before a major emergency occurs, call your local Red Cross chapter and Office of Emergency Services to find out about their plans for emergency shelters and temporary medical centers in case of a disaster.
· Establish all the possible ways to exit your house. Keep those areas clear.
· Know the locations of the nearest fire and police stations.
· Take photos and/or videos of your valuables. Make copies and keep them with a friend or relative in another city or state.
· Include your babysitter and other household help in your plans.
· Keep an extra pair of eyeglasses and house and car keys on hand.
· Keep extra cash and change. If electricity is out, you will not be able to use an ATM.
Sign up to receive emergency notifications online.
Tracy Franklin is the public information officer for South Lake Tahoe.
As with the Angora fire 72 hrs didn’t fit the scenario at all…flames licking the ridge…get out NOW to Hwy 50 that was totally BLOCKED by the way…oh yea…the ‘plan’ is looking good:(
Robin, they want you to have 72 hours of supplies in your home at all times, including water and medicine. That is not how long they want you to take evacuating.
Moral…When the fire came they got a few minutes and all those supplies you’re talking about burned up…(I do agree with the supplies btw) .
Hwy 50 and Pioneer Trail were BLOCKED
You can BS the tourists all you want…
THERE IS NO WAY OUT…..
uh oh wrong, there is the AIRPORT! but that’s a different story albeit connected
What happened to using real names on notes/ comments
David…the way I understand LTN the commentors have until February 1, 2016 to sign up
There many comments on LTN’s opinion page from Jan 1.
Robin Smith:
I live in the Angora Fire burn zone on a street that perpendicularly intersects to Lake Tahoe Boulevard and I had no trouble exiting my street in the evacuation. The fire was at the opposite end of my street when I drove away from my home and the entire street was shrouded in smoke. The residents who were ordered to evacuate their homes were polite and orderly, offered to help one another, and the vehicles traveling on Lake Tahoe Boulevard toward the Sawmill Pond would stop to allow side street vehicles entry on to Lake Tahoe Boulevard. What I experienced was that the Highway 50 areas which were blocked had been done to prevent people from trying to go into the burn area.
While no emergency plan can be perfect for every scenario, having some kind of plan is better than having nothing at all. Glass half full instead of glass half empty.
Were you really a teacher/educator?
Spouse – 4-mer-usmc
4-mer…Yes and put my credentials on this site for all to see…Special Ed elementary and secondary. More than one excellent teacher in South Lake Tahoe knows me personally and by my REAl NAME:)
The point here is as several of these comments have indicated is that there should be a LIMIT on the number of people in this basin at any given time as THERE IS NO WAY OUT OF HERE!!
OH yea…the AIRPORT…you want to have that talk?
Robin Smith:
Hi. I’m actually 4-mer usmc’s spouse, and no, I don’t want to talk about the airport. I’m not certain how a limit on the number of people in the basin at any given time could be implemented. How would you go about that?
Spouse – 4-mer-usmc
Robin Smith has a very small scope. Tunnel vision of a sort, about limiting the number of people in the Lake Tahoe Basin like the fire regulations do in buildings, theaters etc.
Such a plan cannot be done without gated highways or other draconian measures where the travel in and out could be metered. Why would you do that for the Basin? This is not even done in Yosemite. What Smith seems to be most concerned about is being able to DRIVE a vehicle out. Of course we see many times when there is near gridlock on our roads on ordinary holiday weekends. What do you expect from generally two lane, secondary type access when 40 or 50 thousand people need to go home to other parts of California?
I think the point is being missed that even in a forest fire of prodigious size,or other disaster, there are many open areas and facilities that PEOPLE can move into to avoid the fire etc unless they wait until the last minute. They will NOT be able to save possessions of much size but that should not even be in the equation.
Get to an open area and wait the issue out. Beaches, meadows, school athletic fields etc etc. Use what is close to you and understand how to get there.
Even the airport, one of the largest open areas available is easily accessible. I honestly do not understand the airport negativity. We are not talking about commercial service here.
Come snow, smoke, earthquake, any disaster you can think of, the airport will allow relief supplies, people and equipment to get in, and therefore people to get out.
Sheesh! How do people get so focused on minutia at the total expense of common sense. I definitely think using your feet, your bicycle, your wheel chair if necessary should be considered as an option for escape to a safe area before we build gates and set up an agency to count us as we go in and out.
Crank….Tourists 40 or 50 thousand stuck up on Hwy50 bumper to bumper for hours, with children, old people, dogs.
Not a good scenario regardless of the immediate circumstances…minutiae you say.
Spouse…Cranky said it “generally two lane secondary access…”
A tunnel would have been good where that choke point is in HWY 5O…
I don’t know myself not being the engineering type but I do know about managing and moving large groups of people and it’s not safe to have 40 or 50 thousand people literally trapped anywhere.
The only way to limit the number of people here is to limit the number of ‘rooms’ they have to sleep in.
Robin:
I think, in any emergency of size, the powers that be would NOT allow the 40/50K people to exercise the normal tendency to run willy-nilly from danger.
Block access to hwy 50 over Echo (or Spooner if that is the disaster focus) via the installed gates, direct traffic toward open spaces, parking lots, the airports, get people out of their cars and into safer spots where a fire for instance is not going to touch them i.e. the airport. Forest fires would not probably have a significant effect on the many hotels at stateline. Fill ’em up with people.
A dynamic response to a disaster would accommodate where the disaster was…which way the wind was blowing in a fire, for instance.
In any event, the foregoing response would be more effective than a continuing program to log people in or out of Tahoe.
Now….do I believe our current melange of ego-centric cops, sheriffs, CHP, USFS and fire departments are capable of pulling this off?
NOPE. But they should be expanding the emergency drill jokes they put on at the airport into a more expansive model, which identifies which agency was gonna do what in the event of a disaster like we are theoretically discussing.
I could be wrong, but I believe this is common sense.
I too have some experience in moving crowds around….they usually respond to calm, (not screamed) explanations of what they need to do, and more importantly WHY they should cooperate.
If the first 20 do it right, the rest follow. We are truly sheeplike under stress.
I seriously do not believe the SLT police force is capable of calmness. I have seen/heard them, multiple voices simultaneously screaming orders and demands, and I had no idea what they were saying or demanding due to the freaking noise and conflicting orders from the various participants. Obviously, the penchant for waving firearms just makes the situation worse.
Your comments appreciated.