Transportation: Introduction

A disaster will likely interrupt or destroy your community’s transportation infrastructure for a few hours to many months. Despite the destruction, you will need transportation for three key reasons:

• To share or collect information: If power is out and you don’t have a ham radio network established that can run on alternate power, you will need a message relay system consisting of volunteers walking or using alternate modes of transportation.

• To distribute resources: Disaster Hubs may need to be resupplied during the recovery period after a disaster and alternate modes of transportation can be used to move supplies from storage to neighborhoods. In addition, water and food may need to be distributed from restaurants and grocery stores to Disaster Hubs or other resource centers.

• To transport injured people or animals: People who are injured may need to be transported to skilled care at Disaster Hubs. If they are then triaged to a higher level of care like at the Disaster Medical Center, they will need to be taken there. Injured animals will need to be taken to the Domestic Animal Care Shelter.

At the Household Level, transport is about making sure you can evacuate and that you have alternative modes of getting around if you shelter in place.

At the Street Level, transport is about ensuring that you and your neighbors can get to resources (should you need to) and to the Disaster Hub.

At the Neighborhood Level, it is about getting injured people to the Disaster Hub and from the Hub to the Disaster Medical Center.

At the Community Level, transport is about getting around to assess damage, distribute resources, and transport people into, out of, and around the community as needed.

Transportation Options

So what do you do if roads are covered with debris, washed out, or torn up? If highways and bridges have collapsed and roads are littered with cars or blanketed in ash or twenty feet of snow? You need to have some alternative modes of transportation at the ready, specified to your particular region and the disasters you are likely to face.

Consider any of the following alternative modes of transportation that make sense for your region:

• Boats: kayaks, yachts, motorboats, canoes

• Snowmobiles

• Sleds

• Bicycles: electric or nonelectric and with or without attachments like trailers including bicycle ambulance attachments (read more here)

• Horses and carts (please note that horses have sensitive nervous systems and, if they get traumatized by an event, they will need at least a week to recover before they can be put to work)

• ATVs, four wheelers, or quads

• People power: Delivering messages by foot may be required in a disaster that causes substantial damage to roads. Take advantage of the local running club or the high school's cross-country team.

Once you have identified the types of alternative modes of transportation, you can develop a Transport Team, sub-teams for each mode, and a Transportation Plan.