We had candy, temporary tattoos, and zombies at the GO|STAY|KIT booth during Saturday’s Zombie Apocalypse Disaster Preparedness Game in Portland, Oregon. But the most important people were those from the Portland area wanting to learn more about emergency preparedness. Our topic was “family preparedness” and every 8 minutes a new group of area residents (humans) would show up, we had about 5 minutes to educate them about family preparedness before several stray zombies would chase them away. It was all in good fun and everyone had a blast, including the zombies.
During our short time with the “humans” we told them that sitting down as a family and creating a family contact sheet and a family communications plan is the single most important thing you can do to prepare for a natural or manmade disaster. Know each others phone numbers, know where you will all meet up in case of an emergency, know your out of area contact.
Make sure all your family members are “on the same page” when it comes to what you’ll all do in case of a natural or manmade disaster. Just good common sense stuff like that. You can even have your children draw a map to where you might meet up. Be aware where the emergency is in your local area, so you can all avoid that location. Texting instead of a voice phone call is still the best way to communicate in an emergency situation.
