09211 Evacuation or shelter in place?

It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. — Unknown

“Should I stay or should I go” was the title of a popular rock song from the early 1980s that has nothing to do with evacuation but it does sum up the question that must be answered in the event of disaster.

Permaculture and resilience thinker Vinay Gupta notes that in 90% of disaster situations, staying home in the right answer. Even if it is a big disaster, within 30 days the situation tends to normalize. In perhaps 9% of situations, you need to go 20 miles away (because of a flooding, brush fire, etc.) The other 1% covers war and serious insurrection, which is the worst case.

If the problem is flooding or hurricane, you will have to evacuate and if a hurricane, you may need to go further than 20 miles. Hurricane Katrina caused the evacuation of 90% of the residents of southeast Louisiana. Thousands of people were left behind in New Orleans alone, many of them were the poor and elderly. They were literally abandoned by their governments which should be a lesson for us all to heed:

When the going gets rough, you cannot depend upon the government to help or rescue you. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Your race and economic class will likely have something to do with whether or not you receive aid in a timely manner.

A few months later, Hurricane Rita threatened Texas, and the evacuation of Houston and Galveston became a disaster in and of itself, with travel times for the 240 miles from Houston to Dallas as long as 24 hours. Even so, over 48 hours, about three million people managed to evacuate from the Gulf of Mexico, in the midst of great suffering and problems.

If you must go. . .

If you are at risk of a hazard likely to cause evacuation, plan your evacuation in advance and do not wait until the last minute to leave. If you do not own a motor vehicle, you need to find someone to travel with and do that in advance of need.

You must take everything with you that you will need during the evacuation — food, water, and fuel. Reports from all major evacuations in the United States over the past two decades indicate almost immediate problems with supplies of food, fuel, and water along evacuation routes.

The Just In Time inventory system only has limited amounts of products in its pipeline in any given area, based on the expected normal demand. Any surge in demand will empty the stores and supply pipelines quickly. The traffic involved with evacuations will complicate resupply.

Typically, governments bring buses, airplanes, and trains to evacuate people without cars. If you will depend on these systems, go as early as possible and take food and water with you.

Because of the many problems with evacuation, which immediately makes you a refugee, unless it is an overwhelming disaster like a hurricane or military attack, flood, chemical accident, or fire, most of us should try to stay home and shelter in place unless circumstances or the authorities demand evacuation. If ordered to evacuate, or if a common sense evaluation of the circumstances dictates evacuation, don’t delay. Leave immediately.

Bug-out Bags

“Bug-out” is a slang phrase for “evacuation,” that has connotations of “going somewhere fast without much notice.” Because of the potential complications of evacuation, everyone needs a “bug-out bag” for each member of the household, including pets. There may not be much lead-time to prepare so the time to get your bug-out bag together is before the evacuation alert sounds.

Japanese advice — http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12759840

The official US government advice for a bug-out bag includes the following —

Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation. Water is heavy. It weighs 8.35 lbs per gallon. Three gallons of water is 25 pounds. If you evacuate in a vehicle, take more water. If you evacuate on foot or in public transportation, you will not be able to bring as much because of the weight.
Food, at least a three-day supply of nonperishable food
Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
Flashlight and extra batteries
First aid kit
Camping gear
Whistle to signal for help
Dust mask to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties
Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
Manual can opener for food
Local maps
Cell phone with chargers, inverter or solar charger
Prescription medications and glasses (take all of the meds that you have on hand with you since resupply may be problematic)
If you have a baby — Infant formula and diapers
Pet food and extra water for your pet
Currency and coins
Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records in a waterproof, portable container. You can use the Emergency Financial First Aid Kit (EFFAK) (PDF — 977Kb) developed by Operation Hope, FEMA and Citizen Corps to help you organize your information. http://www.citizencorps.gov/downloads/pdf/ready/EFFAK_2010_FEMA.pdf
Emergency reference material such as a first aid book or free information from http://www.ready.gov/. (See Publications)
Sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person. Consider additional bedding if you live in a cold-weather climate.
Complete change of clothing including a long sleeved shirt, long pants and sturdy shoes. Consider additional clothing if you live in a cold-weather climate.
Household unscented chlorine bleach and measuring spoons.
Matches in a waterproof container
Feminine supplies and personal hygiene items
Mess kits, paper cups, plates, paper towels and plastic utensils
Paper and pencil
Books, games, puzzles or other activities for children, a deck of cards.

It is a lot to carry.

Over the shoulder bags and backpacks are useful methods of packing a bug-out bag. Another possibility is a “bug-out bucket,” where you pack one or more 5-gallon plastic buckets with a tightfitting lid with these items.

Pack foods that don’t need preparation — things like peanut butter crackers, trail mix, nuts, jerky, hard candy, etc.

The federal government’s official recommendations for a disaster kit are at http://www.ready.gov/basic-disaster-supplies-kit.

Sheltering in Place

To shelter in place, you need stockpiles of food and water so that if necessary you can simply stay home or in your neighborhood and avoid whatever troubles may be contributing to the crisis.

Shelter in place may be required because of a terrorist action or chemical spill. In those cases, you need to take several actions immediately:

Shut down all heating and air-conditioning equipment that draws in air from the outside. Close all windows and doors including fireplace dampers.

Select a room as a safe room (choose the room with the fewest windows and doors). You need 10 sq feet or room for each person, so that you don’t have to ventilate the room. With that much space per person, the household can stay in the sealed safe room for up to five hours without worrying about ventilation.

Place plastic over the interior of any windows and ventilation ducts and seal it to the wall with duct tape. Place a damp towel on the floor along the doorway to close that opening. Duct tape the door to the door frame.

Do not use any open flame heating in a sealed room. If it is cold, bundle up with blankets and extra layers of clothes.

Here is a government flyer explaining shelter-in-place procedures for chemical spills: http://www.emd.wa.gov/publications/pubed/shelter_in_place_flyer.pdf

Shelter in place due to nuclear attack or radiological hazard.

In the event of a nuclear attack, or a radiological hazard caused by terrorist incident or industrial accident, you may need to shelter in place because of high levels of radioactivity.

The life-threatening hazards of nuclear attack are of two types — the immediate effects of the nuclear blasts and the radiological affects of the fallout.

If you are outside of the blast area, and downwind of nuclear explosions, you are at risk of fallout. Sheltering from nuclear hazards is more complex than from a chemical hazard, mostly because with a nuclear hazard you will need to remain sheltered for perhaps two weeks or longer, depending on the exterior levels of fallout.

You need as much solid material between you and your household and the exterior world as can be managed. One foot of concrete or three feet of dirt reduce the radiological hazard to one thousandth of the exterior level. Even if not perfect, however, any shelter — such as just remaining inside a house in an interior room with no windows or exterior doors — is better than nothing. Interior rooms on the mid-level floors of multi-story buildings are good shelters, since distance as well as solid mass lessens the risk of fallout. Turn off all ventilation equipment, close fireplace dampers, put plastic over windows and seal doors for the entire house or building as indicated in the Shelter in Place section for chemical accidents. The purpose of this is to keep the actual fallout dust from entering the home or the building. If sheltering in a basement, pile dirt over any windows and along the foundation of the house.

The book, Nuclear War Survival Skills, by Cresson Kearney, has information on how to prepare emergency shelters and has plans for constructing an expedient fallout detection device that can be made from materials found in a home. The book may be read online at http://www.oism.org/nwss/ or purchased through the website or through usual bookstore channels.

Plan in advance.

Don’t wait until the last minute to plan. Planning takes time and in an emergency, time is scarce.

One of the oddities of our telecommunications system is that you may not be able to reach a local number but you may be able to call numbers out of the area. Everyone in the family should have the number of a friend or family member who lives in another state. If people become separated during an emergency and cannot connect through local numbers, they should call the out of state contact to leave their location and status and any other important information.

Cell phones will go out of service quickly, due either to excess demand or as an effect of the catastrophe. Make sure everyone has a landline number they can call or be reached at during an emergency.

If people become separated, and an emergency occurs that prevents people from going home, or which requires immediate evacuation without time for everyone to get together, plan a rallying point outside the area where all family members will head for.

If children are in school, talk to school authorities in advance to find out what their evacuation instructions are. If they don’t have any instructions, insist on the development of such plans and publicizing them to the parents so that the parents know where their children will be taken in the event of an evacuation.