I spent the day at the Resilience Northwest 2012 conference, and what an event it was. A lot to learn. I went to the all-day Shelter Management seminar. We discussed under what criteria to open a shelter, and when to close a shelter, and everything in between.
The tabletop exercise included us breaking into groups to manage the event. The scenario went like this-I was the pastor of a small midwestern church and there was a gas leak and explosion in the fictional city nearby. Our group had to decide what to do when people started arriving looking for sanctuary. Did we even want to create a shelter? The Red Cross was maxed out and could offer no assistance, so it fell on our shoulders. How would we run a shelter with limited resources when people continued to show up at our church looking for help? We decided it was the right thing to do-the moral thing to do, that we had to open it and help people.
Every hour our teacher Curtis Peetz a Response Specialist with the American Red Cross would give us a new update on the crisis, and we had to alter our plans to incorporate the new information. Everything from what to do with people’s pets, criminals who would show up, running out of food, looting, child care, drunk people, rumor control, lack of security, volunteers missing shifts, vegetarians with no vegetarian meals. More explosions downtown, deaths, believe me it was a harrowing 7 days-before we finally closed the shelter. Vincent Aarts an American Red Cross, Shelter Team Coordinator said it best, “We are a lifeboat, not a cruise ship.”
At the end of the exercise, thanks to the great work by our Red Cross teachers, we also achieved a sense of self-worth, happiness and well being, because we had done great things and helped hundreds of people, who were desperately in need of assistance as they struggled with one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives.
I attended the tabletop exercise because I wanted to learn how a shelter really worked, now I know! I’m going back Friday to attend individual classes this time. I also talked to people at the seminar about the GO|STAY|KIT because one of the reasons it was invented was as a shelter access kit, complete with Red Cross intake forms. I will blog more tomorrow.
