Developing a Disaster Ready Organization

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Developing a Disaster Ready Organization: How Ready Are You?

When a disaster or serious emergency strikes your area, 911 and other response capabilities are very likely to be overwhelmed. For 72 hours or longer, your organization may be on its own, perhaps with no communication or new supplies. You have to be ready to shelter in place and protect the people you care for, or evacuate to shelter in another location. Either staying or going may be difficult, complex, and possibly dangerous.

Developing a Disaster Ready Organization is an online planning framework for organizations that provide services to people with disabilities or other special needs. As you work with it online, you will take practical steps to prepare your organization to keep your staff and consumers safe and to continue to operate during and after the disaster.

How Will this Planning Framework Benefit My Organization?

A Practical, Written Emergency Plan

At each step of the planning framework, you will document what your organization has done and what it will do next to continuously increase its disaster readiness. This process will produce a practical, written emergency plan that is grounded in action. When you reach the end of the framework, your organization will have a disaster readiness plan downloaded onto its system that can be used from then on to organize and keep track of drills, exercises, and planning discussions.

Readiness for Any Kind of Emergency

The framework presents a blackout scenario linked with important discussion topics and action steps. By discussing the topics and completing the steps, your planning team will prepare your organization for a bomb attack on your area, as well as for any other disaster. For example, no matter what type of event creates the need for your organization to shelter in place, just being ready to shelter enables you to respond in that way to any disaster. Fires, blizzards, hurricanes, or floods are all examples of emergencies to which your organization will be prepared to respond.

What Organizational Resources Are Needed to Work on this Planning Framework?

Readiness Working Group Team Members

Ideally, a group of three or more people from your service provider organization will work together on this planning framework. A group can represent all parts of your organization, like housing, nursing, transportation, facilities, and so on. Because this group is working to improve the disaster readiness of your organization, it is referred to here as the Readiness Working Group. When selecting people to participate, identify individuals who have particular organizational expertise needed to direct and take action to improve readiness for a disaster.

Readiness Coordinator

The leader of the readiness working group is called the Readiness Coordinator. The readiness coordinator is responsible for leading the group and ensuring that records are kept of the discussions, activities, and accomplishments of the group, and of changes in the routines of the organization.

If only one person from your organization is using this planning framework from, (s)he should register as the readiness coordinator and work with other members of your organization offline to take action to improve your organization’s disaster readiness.