Steps You Can Take to Prepare for an Emergency

Transcription:

Melanie Cole (Host): All over the country. And certainly in Southern California, we've seen more and more natural disaster. Earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and more. But there are steps you can take so you and your loved ones are prepared when disaster strikes. Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. Joining me today is Scott Cossey. He's a trauma surge coordinator and disaster planner in the Disaster Resource Center at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.

Scott, it's a pleasure to have you join us today. This is, I think, getting more and more important as the days go by. So why should we be prepared for a disaster? Can we even do things that help? I mean, we can look at disasters from everything from covid and certain people not having enough food or toilet paper to the natural disasters, mudslides and earthquakes and things. Why is it so important to be prepared?

Scott Cossey: Hi, Melanie. thank you for having me on the show. It's my pleasure to be here with you today. being prepared. First of all, it's the cornerstone of reducing fear, anxiety. and most importantly, loss of life, loss of property, the things that accompany disasters, our communities, our families, and the individuals, in them should know what to do in the event of a disaster.

Melanie Cole (Host): I agree with you. It's important and I'm a planner, I'm a planning girl, so if we are looking to be a planner, what's the first step? What's the first thing that we are supposed to do is try and think of every kind of disaster based on where we live. Tell us the first step?

Scott Cossey: Well, fortunately, we have the benefit of addressing or identifying risk. The very first thing you should do is look at the risks in your area or that apply specifically to maybe your home, your business, what it is that you are trying to protect and to try to reduce the loss. So in the hospital here at Henry Mayo, we use something called a risk as. and that, identifies potential emergency scenarios. And once, you really kind of lock down what your specific risks are, you can begin to take the next step.

Melanie Cole (Host): So then the next step, once we've assessed our risk based on where we live, then what do we plan first for a disaster kit that might keep us in our homes like Covid did? Or do we plan for an EVAC kit, something that's a go kit? Do we do both? Tell us how to get going in this.

Scott Cossey: Yeah, it's actually, my passion and I have so much fun with this because you can get your family, your friends, even your pets, should be involved in this activity. So once you've identified those risks, , you really wanna lock down the resources that you would need in abundance. And the things that would be scarce during an event. So, like, for example, water is always a thing, but sometimes people forget food for their pets, mobile shelter for their pets. Sometimes people forget things like surplus medications. If you're currently experiencing an infection of some kind, if you're unfortunate diabetic, or maybe you're undergo treatment for cancer.

So the surplus medications are really important, really crucial, and to put them in something that will protect those medications from the elements. Elements like water, heat, cold, moisture. And so you wanna identify the ideal containers for things like your surplus water, your surplus medications, and most importantly, these days, which we're fortunate enough to have a surplus of these in many cases, emergency power sources. Emergency power sources that utilize USB devices or even go up to an outlet size and you have distributors and manufacturers that are making really exciting products that provide that capability.

Melanie Cole (Host): expand a little on the kit because one of the things I'm finding when I'm making my own kit is I put the medications in or my husband's blood pressure medication. I get this kind of stuff packed. do we have to redo this kit every few months? Do you get one prescription of something and then if you're gonna take that and put it in your go kit, then you have to get another script for your every day normal life. Do we have kind of two of everything?

Scott Cossey: In some cases that's a good idea. In some cases it's not. In some cases, the medications, that have, expiration dates, that happen rapidly. maybe pain medication that you don't want to store for long periods of time. Maybe that's not such a good idea. Talking to your physician and letting them know that you have concerns on sustainability if and when there were a supply shortage, your physician's, advice obviously would be the priority or paramount in this. But many physicians today are very sensitive to this. Because like you pointed out at the beginning, of our dialogue, this is a growing concern and it is an elevating factor in our daily lives.

nobody thought Covid 19 would, do what it did to supply chains. And so the disaster. Although you have fixed, items, ideal items, like for example, food, water, emergency power supplies, surplus medications, some of the items are just totally unexpected that ran out. Like, for example, toilet paper, items that maybe we take for granted, in our daily lives suddenly became a huge priority. And so that's the point I made about it being fun. One of the activities I like to do with my. Is take our, disaster kit, our emergency kit, and create a practice scenario, a scenario where, okay, kids we're living out of our emergency bag for the next 12 hours or eight hours, whatever, what we're going to be doing solely sustaining off of this kit.

And then while you're doing that, while you're having fun with that, taking notes and annotating, what elements in your kit were exasperated in that window of time and then multiplying that window, by whatever factor that you think would be best. In my case, I prefer the 96 hour. 96 hours because in that window of time, a majority of disasters statistically either ended or they're reaching the recovery phase.

Melanie Cole (Host): Well then Scott, and that's such a great idea to actually try it out because people don't think about doing that. That's really a great point. But what's the difference between the disaster kit that we have for events where they say, stay in your homes or power's out for two days or whatever it is that you boil order? There's all these different things that could go on earthquakes and all this, and a disaster kit for evacuation because we're seeing wildfires, we are seeing hurricanes, we are seeing all this stuff where people are told, evacuate. What do you take in that case? And do you keep them in like big tupperwares? How do you gather all of. Together. How much reasonable time should you plan when you're planning? Because You just talked about using it and trying it out. How much reasonable time should you expect to have to evacuate? And then where do you keep everything? How do you keep it all?

Scott Cossey: So those are great questions. So the timeline has actually been looked at really deal. It's hard for me to illustrate because covid changed everybody's attitude about sustainability. Everybody's including my own total reliance on the supply chain, created a lot of day-to-day surprises. Throw into the equation a power outage or throw into the equation, loss of water, and all of a sudden you have a scenario where you are going to be totally reliant on what you've prepared, in advance to those situations.

So, for example, in the past it's highly recommended. Maybe you had a week or two week additional supply of medications. Well, here at the hospital when we started experiencing shortages in regards to medications, or materials, some of those lead times were dragged out to four to six weeks. And so in the past I would recommend, a five day kit or a 96 hour kit, which is, like I said, I have a 96 hour kit. that was reasonable. That was a logical recommendation. Now, I would say, build your supplies out, even a 30 day. 45 day supply.

So just quickly to address, where do you store this stuff? I like to do, cases of additional water. Maybe throw those in the garage. You wanna keep that outta the sun. You wanna keep it outta the heat. food supplies There's a lot of, manufacturers who are producing much higher quality, dehydrated food than you maybe would've been able to obtain in the past. Sodium levels are down, preservatives are down, organic elements in that food are available and it's really worth shopping that. These dehydrated food sources can sustain, a family of five for upwards of a by taking really minimal space in your garage because of the type of storage containers that they're in.

Which by the way, are, ecologically friendly, can resist, pests, maybe getting into that need that for storing that length of time. And then of course, for me, in the car, there's a lot of really handy little opportunities to store a number of items in your vehicle. And the advantage to that is you have a building communication so that you have your radio in the car, you have some surplus space in the trunk or in the back of your car. And then of course, anything you put in the vehicle is already mobilized for transport if and when you would need to evacuate.

Melanie Cole (Host): These are all such important points you're making. And now there's always the aspect of kids. Kids are at school, and God forbid there's these school shootings which could be considered disasters in their own right. And you need to communicate or you do need to evacuate, your kid is in class or at school. Do we have a communication plan set up and if so, how do we prepare for that?

Scott Cossey: That is even better than your last question, Melanie . So we're really lucky right now, here at the hospital. We've been, working. Really hard with LA County and an organization or a grant that we're involved with that funds part of my department and what I get paid to do this for the hospital, called the HPP Grant, the Hospital Preparedness Grant. And I apply the concepts that I learned, from LA County in my daily life and. The horrors, if you will, of a school shooting, are not lost on me. Henry and Mayo experience a very recent, well to me it's recent, very recent event regarding that. And it's such a unique challenge because the folks that.

Decide they want to go out and do this. I don't know that you can really stop them if they're motivated enough to do it. So the best thing to do is to be prepared for the fallout, if you will. What happens? One of the, most wonderful items that has recently been brought to the forefront, regarding active shooters is something called Stop the Bleed. And during Stop the Bleed education you are taught to utilize a tourniquet. And one of the great things about a tourniquet is, the ability to stop, traumatic hemorrhaging is really the variable that is a life saving and that education is available, in the community.

And, if anybody wants more information about that, they can reach out to me. So that's one of the things, one of the unique items that I would highly recommend that you put into your disaster kit. In regards to, mobilizing or evacuating because of an active shooter, statistically active shooter events are relatively short. they are, high impact, low probability. And what I mean by that is if and when that day comes, the preparations like tourniquets, the preparations like evacuation plans. Most importantly, emergency contact information, having the ability in knowing who to call in a moment's notice for help and for direction, is a priority.

So our communication plan, consists of, basically a direct line to the Emergency Medical Services department and the office called the Medical Alert Center. And the Medical Alert Center, has resources on standby that as a hospital we can immediately request, and prepare to, service the increased patient population. In regards to the parents out there and the community members out there, my best advice is to Provide your children with the means to communicate. I know kids have cell phones earlier and earlier these days, but my kids have cell phones. It's a good idea. A lot of that instant communication or the capability to communicate instantly with your children will not only relieves stress.

But it'll give you the opportunity to put a, very solid plan together if and when you have to get your kid outta harm's way. The other thing I highly recommend, and it's a lesson learned from the recent event we experienced at Henry Mayo is identification. Identification really can't be understated in the younger populations, the younger populations don't have driver's licenses, and many times, they drop their book bag and they run, which is what I encourage them to do. But the moment they do that, and if the unfortunate reality is that they become a victim of an incident like that, it is very difficult to identify who the victim is.

Because that young person doesn't have identification, doesn't have their book bag. And so, similar to adults, maybe walletizing an identification card or giving them a necklace maybe with their name on it. When I was a kid we had emergency ID tags, and that's really kind of, I think, fallen by the wayside. I haven't seen that in a long time. But those kinds of things that we used to do before the internet, we used to do before cell. is really key and is really helpful, when an event like that does unfortunately take place.

Melanie Cole (Host): Wow. That was a comprehensive answer, Scott. Really, really important to talk about. As much as we don't wanna think about it, , all of these things, we have to think about them, lest we be the people that are going, why didn't we think about this in advance? I'd like you to wrap up by what you would like listeners to know when you're giving your lectures, when you're teaching your classes, what else should people know about preparing for a disaster, whether it's an evacuation, a natural disaster, a weather disaster, a power emergency, whatever it is. What's the best piece of advice that you tell people every day?

Scott Cossey: Find things that have two purposes. Like for example, your power tools in your garage that are using those lithium ion batteries can also be used to power, a light charge your cell phone even these days, power your television set. So, Make a list and make it fun. try to create joy out of the activity of being prepared rather than looking at the downside or the negative the reasons why you doing this. And most importantly, as a community, I tell the people here at the hospital, I tell my friends, my family, and when I have the opportunity to speak to the city members is we need to stick together, we are in this together.

And only together can we make it when something, as terrible as a disaster occurs, we have your neighbor might be an electrician, your other neighbor might be a nurse. Know these folks, get to know their skillsets and offer your skillset to them. and together is how you get through these.

Melanie Cole (Host): Beautifully said, Scott. Just beautifully said. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about these things, and while it's sometimes uncomfortable, a little bit awkward, this was definitely important to discuss. So thank you so much. For more disaster preparedness tips, you visit ready.gov/plan. You can also visit the free health information library at library.henrymayo.com. That concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for joining us today.