You’re taking steps to prepare yourself and your family, but what about your pet?
Yes, Pet Emergency Preparedness.
Scenes of trapped people and pets prompted Ines de Pablo to form Wag’N Enterprises to promote training and emergency gear such as pet oxygen masks and first aid kits to hospitality companies.
Lots of organizations are prepared to help people, few are prepared to help our furry friends, she says.
She offers 10 tips to kick-start your pet emergency preparedness plans — good basic times not just for pets, but for people too:
1. Create an emergency contact list. Start with friends or family members who live nearby and can reach you or your pets quickly. Make sure they have keys, necessary codes or other information to access your home, grab the pets and evacuate. “For every Plan A, I have a Plan E,” de Pablo says. “Most Plan A’s don’t happen, so Plan C has to be just as good.”
2. Make an emergency kit. Fill a backpack with at least two weeks’ worth of food for your pets and plan for at least a gallon of water per day, per pet. If your animal eats wet food, then it will consume less water. Since de Pablo’s pets are on a raw diet, she keeps freeze-dried food handy.
Read the rest: Making an emergency plan for your pets
So what do you think, is this Emergency Preparedness gone wild? :-)
Filed under Emergency Preparedness by Terry Leverett. 
Contagion, a movie about the rapid spread of a deadly virus, topped the box office charts this past weekend.
Our thoughts?
The film is an interesting mix of sci-fi and conspiracy with layers of intrigue, from government cover-up to the role of the Internet to what people will do to protect their families. Real enough to leave you with the feeling, “it could happen.”
Here’s The Movie Guide review:
CONTAGION depicts an outbreak of a deadly virus that spreads at an extremely rapid rate. Around the world, top doctors take the challenge to stop it, including two American doctors. Homeland Security approaches one of the government doctors just in case the virus was a terrorist attack on the America. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization representative goes to China to find where the virus started and why. When the news media tells how contagious and horrible the virus is, people start to fight and kill each other for food, homeopathic vaccines and any means to save themselves. A private doctor finds a way to grow the virus, and the first step to finding the cure is made.
CONTAGION contains a few overt references to Jesus Christ and prayer. It also has very positive moral elements of doctors serving and saving people. However, it has a depressing theme. Also, the story doesn’t seem to have a clearly defined, dramatic beginning, middle and end. Along with its positive elements, the movie contains some foul language and violence. CONTAGION had a lot of potential but doesn’t live up to it.
Read the entire Movie Guide Review of Contagion
Your thoughts?
Filed under Emergency Preparedness by Terry Leverett.
Interesting presentation from Craig Fugate on how FEMA and the federal government are learning to respond faster and more effectively to national disasters.
NOTES:
Whether you like it or not, in a catastrophic disaster, if you expect that somebody’s going to come to your assistance and personally meet all your individual needs and wants, it ain’t happening… You’re but one part of any community.
When disaster strikes, you tend to look to government to make everything okay… Because that’s what you’ve been told.
You do not live in a “national” government approach to disaster. You live in a federal government. FEMA doesn’t respond to every disaster. Local government responds. States manage. And when it exceeds the ability of the states, they ask the President for assistance. FEMA is responsible to coordinate that response and support. FEMA is never in charge. FEMA operates in a support role.
Speed is critical. You have about 72 hours to stabilize a community. People in a disaster are not victims, they are survivors. What they need is someone to empower them to take care of themselves.
Your thoughts?
Filed under Emergency Preparedness by Terry Leverett.
