If you are
a person with a disability, a personal support network can
help you prepare for a disaster by helping you
- Identify and get the resources you need to cope effectively
with a disaster.
- Practice vital activities like evacuating your home
or workplace.
- Assist you after a disaster happens.
General guidelines for creating
a personal support network:
- You should put together your network before you assess
what your needs will be during and after a disaster.
- Organize a network for your home, school, workplace,
volunteer site, and any other place where you spend a
lot of time. Do not depend on only one person. Include
a minimum of 3 people in your network for each location
where you regularly spend a lot of time during the week.
- Think about what your needs would be during a disaster
and discuss these with each of your networks. Complete
a written assessment of your needs with our network to
help your network members learn the best ways to assist
you and offer additional ideas for you to think about.
- Give your network members copies of your emergency information
list, medical information list, disability-related supplies
and special equipment list, evacuation plan and relevant
documents, and personal disaster plan when you complete
them.
- Arrange with your network to check on you immediately
if local officials give an evacuation order or if a disaster
occurs. Ask your network to notify you of an emergency
you may not know about. For example, if a siren or loudspeaker
system notifies a neighborhood of a disaster and you are
deaf or have hearing loss, be sure that your network knows
to give you this information.
- Arrange on how you and your network will contact each
other during an emergency. Do not count on telephones
working. Also, choose a signal for help that you both
understand. Signals can be shouting, knocking on the wall,
or using a whistle, bell, or high-pitched noisemaker.
Visual signals could include hanging a sheet outside your
window.
- Give the members of your network all the necessary keys
they may need to get into your home, car, etc.
- Show your network how to operate and safely move the
equipment you use for your disability.
- Make sure your service animal knows the people in your
network. This will make it easier for the animal to accept
care from someone other than yourself.
- Explain to your network any assistance for personal
care that you may need. Give them written instructions
on how best to assist you and your animals.
- Label your equipment and attach laminated instruction
cards on how to use and move each item.
- Inform your network about any areas on your body where
you have reduced feeling so they can check these areas
for injuries after a disaster if you cannot check them
yourself.
- Practice your plan.
- Choose an emergency meeting place for each area where
you spend a lot of time that you are familiar with where
you and others can reunite after exiting a building.
- Select with your network a signal that you can use to
let them know you are okay and have left their site.
- Give your network your travel dates if you will be traveling.
- Review and revise with your network your disaster plan
regularly, or as your condition changes.
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