Safety: Community Plan

Step 1. Develop possible disaster scenarios based on the likely disasters in your area. For example, if you are in wildfire country, what specific related concerns do you have in your community? Are there any wildlife refuges or zoos that would need evacuation? Do you have any facilities with combustible/explosive materials, like gas stations, nuclear power plants, or factories? How would you evacuate schools, hospitals, sporting facilities, fairs or carnivals, prisons, or transportation hubs, like airports, train stations, and bus terminals? Do you have large tourist/visitor populations in your community? How will you evacuate them or keep them safe?

Step 2. Working with first responders, business owners, and community government, develop response and evacuation plans according to your scenarios. Make sure to include crowd and traffic control plans.

Step 3. Ensure your community has the resources to manage response and evacuation. These include

• Personnel: Paid employees or trained volunteers, like a Community Emergency Response Team that can help with traffic and crowd control

• Traffic and crowd control tools like moveable barriers, lights, traffic cones, and safety flares

• Access to buses or other means of transporting people

• Temporary signage like route markers and detour signs

• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for first responders and volunteers

Step 4. After a disaster, monitor the community’s safety by assessing damage from the initial disaster

Step 5. Prevent/monitor ensuing related disasters (a breached levee after a hurricane, a fire at an oil refinery as part of a wildfire, a fallen bridge after an earthquake). 

Step 6. Manage crowd and traffic control (learn Psychological First Aid best practices for verbal de-escalation) at post-disaster resource-distribution sites and at community hubs (Disaster Medical Center, Severe Weather Shelters, Child Reunification Center).

Step 7. Respond with crowd and traffic control to facilities involving large numbers of people. These include

• Sports facilities where there is a large crowd in attendance

• Schools that are in session

• Companies with many employees

• Hospitals

• Prisons

• Airports, train stations, and bus terminals

• Grocery stores

Step 8. In the event evacuation orders are issued, monitor evacuation routes to ensure safety.

Step 9. Ensure safety at gas stations, nuclear power plants, refineries, and other facilities involving combustible or explosive materials. You will need to establish a plan between your community government and these facilities before a disaster happens. Rely on federal, county, and state officials’ instructions/guidelines/rules for handling responses involving these types of facilities.