Emergency Preparedness Basics for Churches

Recently we offered written recommendations to a team responsible to make funding decisions for the next year.

For churches to serve the community following a disaster, they must have a disaster plan, decide what role they will play in a disaster, get free training to understand basic concepts and work with other groups. When disasters happen, once life safety, vital records and property are safe, churches may choose to participate as a one of many stakeholders to serve the community. This reduces duplication of services and helps with cost containment. Churches must be able to remain open or relocate in order to serve effectively.

Form a team and develop a plan. Decide who has authority to activate the plan. Have successors in the event that person can’t serve. A successor amounts to plan B and plan C and does not require a meeting to implement.  There are ready made tip sheets that can guide leaders through developing a plan, but it needs to be unique to your church, parishioners, and community setting.

Identify your churches vulnerabilities.. Begin to address vulnerabilities by prioritizing and funding them in order of importance. Some solutions are free or low cost. Start with nursery through 3^rd grade security, and building access control. Train ushers and greeters to recognize problems and have a policy outlining what to do. We may be able to link this group with a free resource if they need help with that process.

Life safety is most critical. Get your people trained in first aid and take a skills inventory and an equipment inventory-items owned by the church or that individuals are willing to loan to the church to aid in a disaster. Find out what skills equipment you have.

Develop a plan to reunify children with their family following a disaster. There is an excellent free online course through FEMA which results in a pdf certificate. It is an excellent course for youth pastors, Christian education coordinators, or anyone with responsibility for the care of youth or leaders of other programs in the building.

Communication is essential. Many disaster plans fail due to poor communication or a lack of understanding how to coordinate your response with other community groups. Everyone needs to be educated on the plan. They need to know which plan to switch to if plan A fails. For instance, if cell phones don’t work, how will church members communicate? Two good tools are text or twitter. These messages get out when others fail. If the infrastructure is down, only HAM radio will work reliably. All fire stations and emergency management offices have HAM support during disasters.

Disaster Planning: Understanding the Long Term Recovery Process

Long term recovery is the least understood, and most expensive phase of disaster response. Within hours of a major disaster there is a preliminary disaster assessment. This usually happens before evacuees are permitted back into the area. This phase begins after search and rescue, triage, first aid, emergency shelter and other immediate needs are met. After a presidential declaration of disaster, FEMA comes for up to 60 days, but it is VOAD partners who carry out 60% of all long term recovery. These groups frequently commit to working in affected areas for a period of months or years. If you live in an area with unmet needs contact your local Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) office. If no response, contact your regional or state VOAD office or your local emergency management office. Be prepared to give specific information about needs. Social media messages, particularly text and twitter are more likely to get through following a disaster. Landlines and cell phones will likely be inoperable. Amateur radio is still the gold standard when all other means of communication fail. Consider establishing a business emergency team with HAM operator support. Fire departments and emergency operations centers train with amateur radio operators and they provide emergency communication support during and after a disaster. VOAD can contact your local emergency management office. In order for your County to receive assistance, they are required to stand up a long term recovery group (LTRG). Once the County commits to this and demonstrates follow through VOAD partners step in to work on cases. Once the LTRG becomes operational VOAD partners transfer remaining cases to the LTRG, which continues to work all the cases.