Many Preppers are often asked “what are you preparing for?” The responses are anything from a simple weather event to an extinction-level event. Having been in the field of disaster planning and response for 24 years, I cannot tell you the number of times someone from the public would call looking for our tornado plan, or flood plan, chemical spill plan and on and on. The reality is, many entities do not have disaster specific plans but rather general emergency operations plan that address the similar consequences of several different disasters.
With that said, there are exceptions such as entities that are at high risk for specific disaster such as flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes or nuclear power plant emergencies. Many entities have a general Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) and then have an appendix for specific disasters. For example, a county in Florida would have a general EOP with an appendix for hurricanes, whereas a county in Minnesota would have an EOP and an appendix for blizzards. Looking at the consequences of a disaster, versus just specific disasters, will improve your level of preparedness.
One Big Beautiful Plan
Name a disaster and it will probably have the potential to knock out the power. So instead of writing several disaster-specific plans, having one plan that addresses power outages and other common consequences would make better sense. The caveat is you must consider all the various nuances of each specific disasters. For example, running a generator in the summer versus the winter months may have some differences that need to be addressed in your planning and preparedness. Consider maintenance, if you run your generator in temperatures below zero degrees Fahrenheit, then you are going to want a thinner engine oil than if you ran it in 100-degree temperatures.
Staying with the same example, you will want to make sure any extension cords are rated for extreme cold conditions. If your generator has a battery starter, you are going to want to take extra precautions to protect it from the freezing temperatures. These differences lead you to develop your standard operating procedures (SOPs), preventative maintenance checks and services (PMCS), training plans for the generator and special items you need to stockpile for your generator.
Identifying Common Consequences
Grab a sheet of paper. Make a grid of boxes. Shade in the top left and box. Now,
Down the left-hand side, write down all the different disaster you could potentially face. This should include a common household fire to a coronal mass ejection (CME) and everything in between. Across the top row of boxes write down all the consequences like power outage, loss of ingress, loss of egress, structural damage to your home, supply chain issues (this could be broke down into categories like food, water, security, transportation, sanitation, medical and others), injuries, loss of water, contamination, et cetera. Now, starting on the top left-hand side, with your first identified disaster, go to the right and put an “X” in each box signifying that that consequence may be faced with that disaster. At the end, for each consequence, count up the number of times it may be faced. The consequences with the higher number of X’s should be your priority for preparing for. For example, if you list 100 different disasters and power outage was a possibility in 99 of them but contamination was only a possibility in 10 disasters, you would want to focus your efforts on being prepared for power outages first.
Focused Prepping
By focusing on the consequences that could be faced in several different disaster you can methodically address consequences that have the highest likelihood of impacting you. By focusing on consequences you can address specifics needs quickly with a high degree of impact, versus starting with each disaster and trying to address all the needs of a single disaster.
Your lifelines
Shortly before I retired FEMA introduce a new planning concept called community lifelines. The lifelines are functions and/or services that society needs to function. When disaster happens a community needs to quickly assess any impacts to their lifelines. If the disaster has impacted a lifeline, then a solution to restore the lifeline is needed. If an earthquake causes multiple water mains to break and disrupts the delivery of safe drinking water one solution maybe bringing in pallets of bottled water that can be distributed at points of distribution sites (PODS).
As Preppers, we can use the same concept in our response planning. First, we need to identify and list what lifelines we have. Many of those identified by FEMA will be relevant to us, specifically utilities. The difference between the lifeline concept and other planning concepts is that using the lifeline concept is tactical, that is it is a process to quickly assess how “bad” the disaster is for you and your family. The lifeline process also makes you develop solutions to the impacts. FEMA uses a Red, Yellow and Green color scheme to allow for a quick glance assessment. Red means the lifeline is down and no solution to restore the lifeline has been identified. Yellow means a solution has been identified but NOT started while Green means a solution has been identified and started or is operational. So if you looked at the status board of the conditions of your lifelines and you saw a lot of red and no green things are really bad. As you develop solutions for restoring your lifelines, you should see more yellow than red and as you start to implement the solutions you will see more green. As an improvement to the red, yellow, and green system, we added Grey which signified that we did not yet have an assessment of that lifeline. Immediately after a disaster all lifelines should be grey until you know otherwise
P.O.E.T.E.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses the acronym POETE to summarize disaster preparedness. The P stands for planning, the O for organization, the first E equipment, the T training and the second E is for exercises. For those with military background or familiarity, this is similar to the TOE (Table of Organization and Equipment) concept the military uses to organize and equip its various units. The way you use POETE is for each consequence you list the planning, organization, equipment, training and exercise (drill/practice) you need to be prepared to overcome the challenges of the consequence. This becomes cyclical as you identify areas of improvement from your exercises.
Just one note on changing your plans/SOPs. I observed plans and SOPs being change based on one exercise, only to be change back the next exercise. Just because you faced one flood or tornado does not mean every other flood and tornado will be the same. Perhaps one flood was caused by 3 inches of rain in 2 hours while the next flood is caused by 1 inch of rain, accompanied by a power outage that makes your sump pumps inoperable. For a tornado, an EF0 that skimmed your property might cause a power outage and some tree damage but an EF4 that hits your house directly will be catastrophic. If you can, use levels or degrees. For example, levels of damage or degrees like scales (EF scale or Hurricane Category). You can refine your disasters by using scales. So instead of just listing “tornado”, you could list EF0, EF1, EF2, and so on. When we planned for municipal water outages, we broke it down by the number of residence impacted. Was it one block or the whole city? There is a big difference in how we would respond. So, when you look and see power outage, you can further refine that by hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
So what would a POETE assessment look like for a power outage lasting one week? Planning might include developing a checklist of actions to perform, like ensuring checks on freezer temperatures periodically, organization might look like identifying who is responsible for setting up, starting and refueling the generator. Equipment maybe buying a digital logging thermometer, training would be training family or group members how to perform a PMCS on the generator as well as how to set up and operate it. The exercise would be turning the power off for a week (or however long) and see if your planning, organization, equipment, and training needs to be refined.
One of the refinements to the POETE concept I made was to add supplies. Why? Because there is a big difference between buying a generator versus planning for the recurring cost for things like fuel, spark plugs, and oil. In the original POETE acronym you would identify the need for a generator but there was no place to identify and detail the fuel needed to run the generator for one week or two months.
Long-Term Planning and Budgeting
Whether you are just starting out or you have been prepping for decades, there is always the need for longterm planning and budgeting. Your disasters/consequences Chart will show you what your priorities are. Your POETE or POESTE (with the “S” for adding supplies) will give you an idea of the financial costs and time needed to prepare. This information can then be used to develop a realistic budget. Perhaps you save money in year one for your generator. And then the next year you budget for supplies like spare parts, and a 5-year supply of engine oil.
Proof That You Are Not Spinning Your Wheels
The good thing about having a written, long-term plan and budget is that it is a way for you to see all your preparedness accomplishments. That may sound trivial but considering that preparedness is a lifelong endeavor it is easy to feel like you have not accomplished anything. It is also a methodology to help ensure you do not have any “cracks” in your preparedness. Without a written plan, you do not know what you are doing and how you are going to do it. With the written plan, you can see you have training for certain functions and you have put 500 gallons of diesel in storage.
It is just a plan
When you boil it down, a plan is a guide. It allows you to focus your efforts, mental, physical and financial, on goals you want to accomplish. There have been plenty of projects on my 3-year plan that took 5 or 7 years. When life happens, update your 3-year plan. Having a three-year plan, that lists your goals and objectives allows you to quickly pivot to another project when circumstances (life) doesn’t allow you to accomplish a goal.
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