Getting Back To Life After An Earthquake

After the latest devastation in Fukushima Japan, Tokyo and Christchurch New Zealand, plus the ongoing effort to rebuild after the Chile and Haiti earthquakes, we’re rerunning one of our best posts. It’s not just about getting ready for disasters, but it’s about getting back to LIFE after a disaster. That’s something very few people talk about. Yet millions upon millions of people are facing that question right this moment. How do we get back to our normal lives after this magnitude of disaster. It’s the third piece in a series and you’ll find the links to the other two parts below.

Not only does the series tell you how to prepare for an earthquake, but it gives you tips on being prepared for ANY disaster — the right way! In case you didn’t see part one and two, you’ll find the links at the end of the post.

In the post you’ll also find our latest video on our latest Book/Get Ready Kit Ready In 10, now on Amazon.com. Pick up a copy, to get detailed, quick and easy ways to get back to life after disaster.

Having made it through Southern California earthquakes and a jumbo jet crash right across the street from our home, we know how difficult the coming weeks and months will be for the people of Japan and New Zealand as they deal with this horrendous disaster.

Our prayers are with them. LG

Facing a disaster without giving yourself a plan to recover from it, is like trying to build a house with no blueprint and no tools!

Having two plans can make all the difference, in getting you through those first few days and weeks after a disaster strikes.

What are the plans? They are the Ready In 10 Evacuation Plan and the Get Back To Life Plan — the same plans that we’ve built into our Ready In 10 System.

The evacuation plan is pretty simple. It all comes from one question… If you were at home or at work and suddenly had to evacuate your home, or your general area, where would you go?

As you think about the locations you’ll use for your evacuation, consider, the people travelling with you, how you’ll get there (car, bus, plane), any pets travelling with you and whether those locations will actually work for you – for instance are they close to stores or services your family might need, like pharmacies, clothing, banks and doctors.

We suggest that people have three different locations in mind, to give you different types of locations and choices depending on the circumstances. As you create your plan, write everything down in detail. If you have to use this plan, you and the people you love are probably going to be in panic mode and following an easy to understand plan, will help calm and focus you.

Write down the people who will be travelling with you, and any special instructions you’ll need to gather everyone together, in case a disaster or emergency occurs while you’re all away from home. Name the location that you and your family will use to meet up with each other and the location you will be evacuating to, if you cannot live in your home, but your immediate area is still safe. Include the address of the location, contact phone, email address and directions.

Next choose a location (writing down the details, address and contact information) that your family will use if you not only need to evacuate your home, but your immediate area or city. This might happen during a moderate hurricane or a tornado. Your third location is out of state, for a serious, widely destructive emergency like Hurricane Katrina, the Iceland Volcano, or other disaster that will make your entire region uninhabitable.

You will also include these locations on your emergency wallet card and your family’s wallet cards (and hopefully your Shoewallets to carry them securely!). Now, no matter what the disaster, even a fire or local emergency, you and your family will now know where and how to gather, and who will be responsible for what, so you can quickly reunite and travel on to your emergency location together. If you like, you can also give a card to the person you chose to be your out-of-area contact as well. Will you have any pets travelling with you? Be sure to fill out the pet section, so that you will have all the information you need for them, like the name and numbers for the veterinarian, their licenses, and names/numbers of kennels in the location you are evacuating to and any prescriptions or special instructions you’ll need until you return home.

So are YOU prepared to deal with a disaster? Check out our latest video and see.

Your Get Back To Life Plan

The worst part of any disaster, short of losing a loved one, is the possibility that the home you love and care for and everything in it would be damaged beyond repair. That is what your Get Back To Life Plan is all about.

Imagine that you and your family have survived an earthquake, but had to leave your area because it is uninhabitable. You’re in your evacuation location two days after the hurricane subsides. The phone rings. It’s a good friend of yours, who has just toured your neighborhood and is calling to tell you that your home is badly damaged and he doubts that you will be able to live in it for several months, if ever again. After you and your family hold each other for a while and talk, you finally feel strong enough to open your Ready In 10 Notebook. There you find your Get Back To Life Plan and begin making calls to your insurance agent, your contractor and your boss. You call the local real estate agent in your evacuation city and ask her to begin looking for temporary housing, register your children in the local school, and begin calling the contacts you need (that you jotted down just in case), to help you settle in. Getting settled is easier than you thought, since you have copies of all of the vital documents you need, like your birth certificates and property deeds in a safe deposit box at the local bank. It takes some time, but with hard work and a lot of courage, you and your family are back to living in a matter of weeks.

Now imagine the same scenario, the same phone call, holding your family, talking and then realizing that you have no plan and no clue how to get back to living your life. It’s CNN coverage all over again. The best part of this little scenario is that it hasn’t happened to you and that you have time right now, to make sure no matter what ever occurs in your area, you and your family will be prepared.

If you don’t have a copy of our actual Get Back To Life Plan, grab a piece of paper. Take a few minutes to answer the following questions:

• How will we handle our bank accounts, paying our monthly bills and receiving our paychecks? How much emergency cash do we need to have, while traveling?
• What are our credit card limits and toll free numbers for emergency increases?
• How will we work? Will we work remotely or have to look for new positions? What people or contacts can we call about temporary or permanent jobs?
• How will we handle our medical, dental and prescription needs while in the new location? What doctors and dentists can we use while there?
• How long can we stay in our evacuation location? If we need to remain evacuated longer, where will we go/stay? Who will our real estate contacts be, if we need to find new permanent or temporary housing?
• How are we going to secure the property or vehicles we had to leave behind?
• How will we take care of our pets, during the evacuation and until we find new permanent housing?
• How will we handle our transportation needs? What contacts will we need to purchase or lease vehicles?
• How will we handle our daycare needs? How will we handle getting our children into school if necessary? What schools or contacts will we need, to enroll them in a new school in a temporary or new location?
• How will we handle any special needs in our family?

Once you’ve answered the questions, get your family together to work out any potential problems you have uncovered and then draft your plan. And don’t forget to compile a list of real estate agents, financial contacts and jobs, schools, doctors and other professionals or information that you might need to establish yourself in the new city temporarily or permanently.

Starting over is never easy, especially when it happens because of a disaster or other life changing emergency. But taking a few hours now to think through and draft a plan, will give you and your family the direction, information and support that you need, to get through not only the first hours and days after a disaster, but the first steps back to living the life you’ve worked so hard to build.
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Want to be ready to deal with any disaster or emergency in 10 minutes or less? Are you READY to create your Get Back To Life Plan, Evacuation Plan and have all of your vital information and cherished belongings GRABBABLE and ready to go? Then grab a copy of our Ready In 10 Book and Downloadable Get Ready Kit for only $19.99 from Amazon.com!

Purchase Ready In 10 From Amazon.com

Read more about the Ready In 10 System

part 1 Earthquake Rocks Baja California
part 2 The Right Way To Get Ready For Earthquakes

Earthquakes, Wildfires and a Gas Explosion

It’s been quite a week!

It began with the Christchurch New Zealand 7.0 earthquake last Saturday. Buildings crumbled, facades lined the main streets and shaken residents have had to endure more than 100 aftershocks, a few in the range of 6.0. Thanks to tight building standards after a devastating 7.8 quake in the 1930s, incredibly no one was killed. But the damage to businesses and homes will reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more.

And then there were the continuing wildfires in Boulder Colorado. Fires that sprung up and altered their path so quickly that residents — some of whom are experienced firefighters themselves — had little warning to evacuate their own homes. Breathless and shaken, residents grabbed what they needed, and in some cases only what they could grab, to get to a temporary location and wait for news on their neighborhood and their homes. As of yesterday, the fire, still only 30 percent contained, has charred nearly 6,400 acres and has destroyed 169 homes.

Then on Thursday night the small community of San Bruno, California, just a few miles from the San Francisco Airport, was rocked — a more accurate term would be obliterated — by the sudden explosion of a natural gas pipeline. At least four people have died, many more are hurt or burned, some seriously. The fire itself was so hot that car bumpers melted two blocks away. The fire was finally contained on Friday, but those surveying what is left of the once quiet, lushly green neighborhood, described it as Kosovo after the war, or a charred moonscape. Block after block of nothing left except concrete foundation after foundation. Nothing left.

Now that the original disaster is behind them, the time and energy that it will take for the people affected by each of these disasters to recover, is just beginning to sink in. Think about it for a moment. These people were running to get out of their homes. They had little if ahy time to grab what they needed, let alone stop and think about it.

For those who lost their homes, do they have the vital information they need, with them? If they’re injured, do they or the physicians treating them have access to their medical or allergy history.

Let’s say they are all right physically. Do they access to their insurance documents for their home, cars and other property? Do they even know their policy numbers or the contact names so they can get started on filing claims.

Do they have what they need financially? Do they have their credit cards, bank account numbers, know their credit limits or who to call if they need an emergency extension? Do they know where to send their mortgage or rent payment or have copies of the deed to their home, their birth certificates or citizenship or benefit papers. Can they even prove who they are and what they own?

Do they have any idea where they are going to go when they evacuate? Will the things that they need be at that location waiting for them? Do family members in different locations know where to gather? Do they all know what to do when they get there? Can they reach their family and friends quickly and easily?

Do they have access to or copies of the things that mean the most to them? Their keepsakes, family photos and papers, the things around them that inspire memories and make them laugh, smile or just feel good.

Yes they’ll have a home for a few days, along with water and food. The Red Cross will see to that. But what happens after that. What happens if they go back to their home and there’s nothing there but a foundation? Yes after months, maybe even years of hard work, they will survive. They’ll find a way and little by little their life will return.

The thing is, they don’t have to just survive. With a little planning, a little thought and a few hours work, they can do more. They can actually thrive after a disaster. They can have their vital information, papers and medical information in a few different locations, at their fingertips 24/7 from any location. They can have evacuation and Get Back To Life Plans guiding them through those first hours, days and weeks, helping them to restore — as much as possible — their lives back or nearly back to where it was before the disaster occurred.

Of course you can’t replace a home completely, you can’t replace entire neighborhoods and you can’t bring back those who have been lost. But with a little work now, you can build yourself a roadmap, ensuring that you have what you will need during the twists and turns of recovery. With that map survival turns into recovery and recovery turns into restoration.

It seem fitting on this ninth anniversary of 9/11 to talk about restoration. We all know how hard it can be. But we here at the Ready In 10 Network, want you to know that a little bit of planning can make it a lot easier.

The one thing we’ve all learned this week is how quickly a normal evening can turn into disaster filled nightmare. Last week the people of Christchurch and the people of San Bruno were just sitting around their houses surfing the internet just like you, without a clue that in just a few hours or days, their lives would be forever changed.

Do yourself a favor, do your family a favor. Take an afternoon and get ready. Our downloadable Ready In 10 Get Ready Kit is only $9.95 and has everything you need to get ready in one afternoon. Ready In 10 is a great start, and we also have a disaster page, filled with videos and guides on preparing for different types of disasters.

Whatever you do, whether it’s from us or from another great disaster plan provider, don’t let another day go by without being ready. It’s so simple and once you do it, you can toss your plans in your plastic emergency bin and forget about them. Unless you need them. And when you do, they’ll be there waiting for you to Grab Them & Go.

Take care and please, be safe.

The latest on Christchurch, Boulder and San Bruno