Thursday, September 28, 2006
Disaster Planning - Before It All Goes To Hell
I don’t mean to sound overdramatic, but I’ve got my plate full today and tomorrow. And by full, I mean seam-burstingly overpacked like a corgi in sausagecasing. If life is like a box of chocolates, I feel a bit like Lucy in the candy factory. I can’t swallow fast enough to choke down this much reality. Plus, I’ll be out of town tomorrow, leaving well before dawn and getting home after 9 at night. Anyway, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get down any of the stuff I’d want to be dumping on this here cybernetic landfill of ideas, but to keep you from abandoning me entirely here’s a few notes I took at last week’s staff meeting:
We try to have a guest for the first part of each staff meetings. Last week it was L, from our L.A. office, who discussed disaster preparedness. L went through a lengthy community training program to learn how to scream in the event of a disaster, what to pack in your survival paratrooper duffel, and how to perform triage on plastic mannequins. She shared with us a lot of information and many valuable lifesaving hints (start a campfire with wintergreen lifesavers! glue a whistle to your crowbar! keep extra painkillers in a hollowed-out tooth!), but my favorite nuggets wound up in my notebook and here they are:
* Make a P.A.S.S. for safety! That’s right, P*ull, A*im, S*queeze, S*weep! Pull one out, point it where it counts, squeeze one off, and then work the gentle brushing action from side to side. That’s good advice in anyone’s book, but in this case it’s how we’re told we should use a fire extinguisher. These guys are a hoot. I mean, how could this be about how to use a fire extinguisher if there’s no mention of a tiled hallway and a castered task chair?
* This graph:
Atomic threat, atomic threat with even more ovals, pirate, infected steering wheel, exploding bowling ball. I think they should have included a shark and a Darth Vader, but other than that I think they’ve got it covered. I must say I feel a lot more secure and calm now that all the threats have their own place on the swooping line. It seems that the strategy should be to stay the hell away from that line for as long as possible, and things should be okay.
* The program that put all this data together (okay, technically, “these data") is called the Community Emergency Response Training - the C.E.R.T. (it’s a disaster training! it’s anti-terror training! It’s two - two - two paranoia-inducing trainings in one!) However, in San Francisco I guess they thought the word “community” was too exclusionary or paternalistic or trademarked or something, so they call it the “Neighborhood” E.R.T. That’s right, it’s the N.E.R.T. program. Hell, I’d go through it just for the t-shirt. “S.F. NERT - we’ll help you get them out of the vise!”
So, thanks for your attendance, and remain vigilant - only you can prevent a natural disaster, only natural disasters can prevent terrorism, and after that things get a bit muddled for me. Okay, I’d better get the hell back to all that crap I need to deal with. buh-Yeah.
