The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Follow these Vital Personal Preparedness Tips | BTS #43

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

In this episode I share the health and medical focused tips learned over a decade in Public Health and Emergency Management.

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we'll get started with Between the Slides in 3, 2, 1. Hey everybody, welcome to Between the Slides episode 43. This will be in the wellness category. It's going to be personal public health preparedness, and it's based on a program that I used to do in partnership with our emergency management, law enforcement, fire department folks on what was called Survivor Day. And it's public health preparedness before, during, and after an emergency.

So it's really going to focus on some of the same themes that you would for general preparedness, general personal preparedness. So if you go to your localities emergency management page, they should have some great information there. Ready.gov has tons of information and we'll touch on that and I'll have resources there. Ready.gov has tons of information and we'll touch on that and I'll have resources there. But also going to focus on some public health stuff, cooking temperatures for food, water for babies, sanitization, those kind of things. So let's jump right into it. The first thing is that clean hands save lives and you wash your hands for 20 seconds. Washing hands, the invention of soap

and scrubbing hands and washing them regularly has saved probably more lives than a lot of other things. So when should you wash those hands? Before, during, and after food prep, before eating food, before caring for someone who's sick, treating a cut, after using the toilet, after changing diapers, after blowing your nose, after touching an animal, after handling pet, after touching garbage. So often when maybe whatever you got on your hands could get on something else that's going to get on somebody else's hands. We've all seen flu sickness go through the office, the station, the gym, wherever you are. Mostly it's from dirty hands, people sneezing, stuff all over them.

When we were in public health or when I was in public health, a lot of the investigations of sickness in restaurants or other places were from sick people that were at work that shouldn't have and from folks that didn't wash their hands well after perhaps some of these instances I mentioned, whether it was food, raw food, or going to the bathroom and they were sick and things like that. So trust me when I say, which we will repeat, wash your hands. So what's the right way to wash your hands? Everyone thinks, oh, I know how to do that. But I've seen folks, you know, when I'm at a restaurant and they go in there, one, just

walk out the door, which is super gross. Two, wash them with just water real fast. And really, it's the vigorous rubbing of the hands together that helps kill it. So clean running water, warm or cold, and apply soap. Rub them together, right? That friction, that scrub is what breaks apart all that stuff. It doesn't have to be with like 200 degree water, which would hurt anyway. It's again, that rubbing for at least 20 seconds, hum or sing happy birthday. It might look like a crazy person. So in your head, do it

from beginning twice, um, and rinse them really well under that water, get all that soap off and then, um, use a clean towel or air dry them. And I won't get into the science between using the air dryer and blowing all the stuff all over the place or a paper towel that someone else might have touched with their poo hands or whatever. So use one of them, though, and just make sure that we do that right. So what are some basic personal preparedness principles? Here's the big three things. And there's a fourth one, but these are the big three. So making a kit, having a plan, staying informed, and a bonus, if you choose, is getting involved in your community. And we can touch on that a little bit.

For the public health, it's the Medical Reserve Corps. For general emergency management, it's Community Emergency Response Teams, or CERT. Volunteer fire, MS, all these different opportunities, big scale team Rubicon, those kinds of things. But the big three for yourself to focus on is make yourself a kit, have a plan and stay informed. So how do we do that? So what we can start with, with our kit, particularly we're going to focus on the public health and medical. So kits often you need to have like flashlights and batteries, shelf stable food, which means it doesn't have to be in a can. It doesn't have to be freeze dried or anything.

A lot of you, you can see like noodle dishes and bags and things like that. Those are shelf stable, which means they can sit there in temperature regulated areas, just, you know, room temperature and be fine. So one thing you want to do health and medical focus wise for this kit is call your doc and request a 30-day supply of medication if possible. Get two weeks in a pill organizer, put those together, make a schedule, write down the schedule because if something happens in a disaster and you have it saved in your phone and you lose power on your phone and somebody else has to help you get those medications, then we may not know how we can help you. So have your medication schedule and put them in your go bag. So do you have a bag that you can just grab and go, i.e. go bag, that has your critical stuff in it, your medications,

any medical supplies? And this is the second bullet, health and medical-wise. And when I would work in an emergency operations center as part of public health, a big issue we would try and solve for folks is emergency oxygen, right? So do you have the 24-hour or emergency number for the medical supply companies because your mother or grandmother or father or whoever is on oxygen, either bottles or a condenser that makes it with power so when there's no power, that's a problem. And then even though it's oxygen bottles, those don't last forever. So do you have an extra supply? Localities don't just stock those. I mean, they do for EMS and fire, but those aren't an extra stockpile to resupply the public. And so really, when the public reaches out, the best that Emergency Operations Center can do is help

facilitate solutions. The best that we all can do for ourselves is ahead of time, make those arrangements with our companies. So if you have homebound family or friends, or you know folks like that, just maybe a reminder, hey, do you have that emergency number for your oxygen supply company or other critical medications and have that before the disaster happens, obviously. Change of primary andend matters for medical devices. So another interesting device is an LVAD or left ventricular assist device. So it basically works as your left ventricle, that thing that actually does that big squeeze that pushes the oxygenated blood through the rest of your heart. Well, some folks that doesn't work in their heart. So they have a connection to a device, that LVAD device that does that for them.

And it hangs in a bag and I'm sure there's different variations, but it requires power. That's a pretty life critical one, right? Because if that stops working, the blood stops flowing. So do you have it charged up? Do you have extra batteries for it? Again, do you have the, you know, usually probably you'd work through the hospital because again, that's a pretty critical device. But there's other medical assist devices, the kind of attached diabetic monitoring and insulin devices for those, you have extra batteries for those kinds of things or chargers or things like that. So think about all that ahead of time because worst case scenario, trees are down, power's out for two, three days. And they say three days, but you could plan for a week easily,

72 hours or longer. In some areas, as we've seen in recent years, tornadoes or hurricanes have just decimated areas for weeks or months at a time. That's a whole different level, but at least that initial 72-hour supply of batteries or backup is good. Also, wash your hands when you're supposed to. A little reminder there. So food and water considerations. Three-day supply. I mentioned shelf-stable food. Try and have a three-day supply, and that's for everyone. So think about I'm 5'11", a couple hundred pounds, a little more, a little less, depending on how much I've exercised each day. I can eat a good bit of food. So think about the amount of food just for me to stay healthy and hydrated during

a disaster is more than it is on a nice sunny day. I'm going to be doing probably more manual labor, working in different areas, clearing debris, doing whatever. I'm stressed more. So think about that. And it's got to be food that doesn't require electricity, storage prep, meaning canned food, soups, et cetera. So certainly canned foods and soups, those are great. Make sure you have the standard can opener though, not an electric one, right? So just get the basic metal one or the old school military, pop it around the room of the can thing. But think about shelf stable food and have three day supply for each person in your household. So each person has their own three-day supply.

A big consideration, especially medically, is folks that are on special diets. So if you think about someone that's on a low-sodium diet and you have a bunch of canned food, canned food often has super high sodium. There are low-sodium options. So when you stock your kit, consider that as well. Also, food allergies, right? So nuts are great snacks in general health-wise, but if you have people with nut allergies, you can't have bags of party peanuts and cashews and all that stuff around. You get cross-contamination. So think about that as well. You got to consider all that. And if you're in a household with someone that has allergies, you're already thinking about that anyway, but really something to consider. Water. Humans have to have water, right? We can't live without it. So a good rule to build your kit with water is to have one gallon of water per person per day for drinking

and sanitation, right? So that's to keep us hydrated. That's also which I would advise trying to do ahead of time anyway. Drinking water regularly is great for you. And sanitation, right? So if you're in an area like I used to be at a house that had well water. So the good thing is it's free, so to speak, except for the electricity to pump it. But when the power goes out, now we don't have water pressure. So we have a generator. We'll get into that in a little bit. So for sanitation, washing hands, if we have no well pump, then our faucets won't work to wash our hands. So think about that for an extended period. And if you have some water, you can at least use that. You can use hand sanitizer as well. Also consider if you're in a household with little ones, you're going to need extra water just for their baby bottles,

right? And so that's huge. So figure out some of that math and I've done some of that and we'll get into that in a second, but you got to have extra just for baby bottles for little ones as well. I mentioned this already, non-utility or non-electric can opener or utility knife. It's always good to have a good knife, whether it's fixed blade folding, a Leatherman combo kind of deal. Always have that anyway, but certainly in your kit, have that available. So folks can use that if they need to. So that number two key thing is have a plan, right? So we've made a kit with some stuff in it, focused on the health and medical aspects. And again, hit that ready.gov or your local emergency management website or state emergency management organization,

and they'll have other guides. So we've gotten our medicines, our batteries for our electronic things, our medical devices, our backup numbers. So now we're going to look at having a plan. So what does that mean? So part of our plan needs to be planning for us, thinking about us. So let's say the disaster is a blizzard and you're snowed in. You have to know your physical limits, right? We would report on fatalities during storms.

And some of those would include slips, trips, and falls on the ice, either injuries, not necessarily fatalities. Some, which most folks I'm sure listening have heard of this, shoveling snow and you have a heart attack. If you're not regularly active, don't go try and shovel your entire driveway or other areas of snow. It is physically demanding. I'm in pretty good shape, and it will make you sweat and work.

I mean, you're moving however many pounds of snow per big snow shovel and you're moving them and twisting. It's a lot, same thing with moving debris and things like that. Take your time, stay hydrated. If you're not active, don't go out there and go crazy. That's when bad things can happen and we don't want that to happen.

As part of your plan, identify the safest areas in your home or the community. So in your home, think about tornado preparedness, right? The interior room, no windows. Typically it's like a closet under the steps or an interior bathroom or something like that. Thinking about the kind of survival triangle, particularly for earthquake prone areas. So up against the wall where there's other walls that can make kind of this, this not safe space, but like survival space. I know there's a term for it. But think about those areas right away from windows is generally always good. So if debris is flying around, you're not going to get hit with that or the broken glass from things flying through the window. So look at that interior bathroom basements, certainly if it's a below ground basement, awesome, and generally pretty good for storms and things. Um, this should

happen every day and regularly plan escape routes for fires, uh, for carbon monoxide alarms, right? Especially those, if those are going off, you got to get out quick cause it'll catch up with you. Uh, it can, it can take you folks out that carbon monoxide where you just lose that oxygenation and pass out and then unfortunately a problem. If you don't have carbon monoxide alarms, get them in your house. They're definitely well worth it. Other hazards too that may occur,

bad guys coming into your house, where are we gonna go? What's our fallback plan? If you choose to have weapons in your house, who's gonna do what with them? I know that's part of my plan. I have handguns and shotguns and so between my wife and I divvy up who goes where and really what defensive position. And I'm not an expert in that. That's just some practical planning I've built

into my plan. And I would consider that health and medical because it's the health and wellness of my family compared to a bad person coming into my house. But the day-to-day stuff, the fires, definitely plan for that. Where are you going to rally? You know, who's going to call 911? Where do you go? Stay low, all the fire safety stuff. And there's tons of information out there.

Make a list of contacts, both in-town contacts and out of town. And we're so, you know, on our smartphones, all our contacts are there. I actually saw the other day, a young man who's probably early teens. And the person when I was getting a haircut asked him when he was checking in, what's your phone number? He had no idea, right? Because we're all so used to saving that on our phones. We don't write them down. We don't have lists anymore. We don't have address books anymore.

But do that for part of your plan. So at least there's a contact list somewhere written. And the in-town ones, obviously, for folks that are close to you, but also out of town. Sometimes during a disaster, when you make a phone call, you can get to someone that's not in the congested call area that's out of town faster than you can someone that's in your area when everybody's tying up the whole network. So consider that as well. Also, you can text sometimes, usually when phone calls won't get through. So consider that. And make sure that everyone in your house at the youngest comprehensive age possible knows how to call 911. And as importantly, when to call 911. Right? So I have three boys, 13 now, geez, I was gonna say 12. 13 now. I'm 8 and 6. And they all know how to call 911 or at least ask Siri to call 911 or say it's an emergency. So that's the instance where a smartphone is helpful.

We don't have rotaries or, you know, what I should have is one of the old school plug-in phones is the backup backup. I need to get one of those again. But why would we call, right? We know it's not a game. We don't call and just, you know, mess around. That's not at all. But what would happen? What if something happens to dad and he's hurt? And, you know, I'm the, the corpsman, the medic guy in the household, and I can walk you through some things, but there may be an instance where I get hit in the head with a big branch and I'm out of it. So what do my kids do? And so make sure that they know how

to do that. Also, if need be, wash your hands. There's your other reminder. More food and water is part of your plan. Does everybody know where that emergency kit is? You can have this awesome kit in this great plastic bin or OtterBox or whatever cool thing or sitting on the shelves in your garage, but does everybody know where it is? Do they know what the tools are they can use there? Do they know where the food is, how to prepare it? Does everybody know how to avoid cross

contamination with the folks that have allergies so that they know, hey, in this kit, we have folks here that are allergic to nuts, so don't open that package at all. Keep it sealed. Don't mess with it. Those kind of things. And again, if you're in a household where someone has an allergy, you're probably pretty familiar with that. But what happens if you are kind of cross surviving cross getting through something with other people, you have to consider that as well as part of your plan. And this kind of circles back to the water prep for yourself. So as part of your planning, plan out the amount, right? So one gallon is 128 ounces, fluid ounces. So 128 ounces is about 16 eight ounce bottles for babies. So consider that. So you can, with a gallon of water, make 16 bottles for a baby if you're at the eight ounce stage. And you have to adjust that number, obviously,

for however much your baby is or isn't drinking. So it's about four bottles a day, four days of water just for baby bottles. So think about that. That to me really, in addition to planning for D-Day like Eisenhower did, speaks to the plans themselves can be useless, but the planning aspect of it is everything. So just do the math, figure out where you or your child are needing that fluid included in your overall extra gallon just for adults or older kids and factor that in there. So staying informed, how do we do that? You got

to go old school with some of this. Listen to the radio. If storms are brewing, they're coming in. I know for me, we've cut the cable cord a long time ago. We use an antenna and we stream things. But whenever there's bad weather, I always put on local weather using the antenna. If that goes out, then we can check our weather apps and things like that. But keep the television on. That includes for weather, for health warnings and updates, right? So if there's recalls on meets and gosh, I feel like every other week there's a recall on something, but pay attention to that. Cold weather, what's coming in? What about that snow we may have to worry about? Is there more prep we have to do in our areas? Warm weather, mosquito notices. One thing that I had to be part of or was part of was when West Nile virus was

coming back or other issues, other diseases that mosquitoes carry and they start to show up in your area. How do we put that announcement out? How do we manage that? How do we coordinate with our folks that are experts in an area? And so when you stay informed, certainly do so via the internet and the webs and all that good stuff, but you're going to have to also have a radio available, one of those hand crank ones, one of the old school ones that just uses an antenna. Certainly get a hand crank or other similarly, both battery and you can crank it up to power it version and then watch that television. So when you have storm warnings, you know, know the difference between a watch and a warning a watch. Hey, we have the

ingredients. A warning is, hey, it's already happened. Somebody's seen it and watch out for more of that. So pay attention to that. Do you know your doctor's schedule? So for health and medical, if you have ongoing medical issues, do you know if your physician, your primary care physician is going to be available? And I've seen this. I work in healthcare and pie in the sky is everybody's health records connected in one big system. And I know that scares the heck out of some folks.

But in reality, that would be so beneficial because there's no getting around your relationship with your primary care physician however if if your file your record is sitting in in a folder in their office or it's only in their system which is the electronic version of it sitting on a shelf that's not as beneficial as if you can see any physician anywhere and they can quickly review and get your history. That's what these health information exchanges are for. And so I highly encourage that we get there. If your doctor's not in town, do you know how to get a hold of them? Can you call them so that they can call you in an emergency prescription if you didn't stock up or you ran out or the med supply, your kit got wiped out and so now you have to get

some more. And part of public health and medical, both at the, really not both, but all at the local state and federal level is to come in in real bad areas and help refill some of those prescriptions and help give folks their supplies back. But your primary care physician is going to be able to send straight to a pharmacy if the pharmacy is still in business during whatever disaster, your information and get your prescription refilled. Do you know the emergency provision and plans of those health companies that provided you with those supplies, whether it's Walker's oxygen, there's batteries for your LVAD we talked about, and are they available in an emergency? So if you plan for that, if you stay informed on what those procedures are, they may have a different number during a disaster than they do during day-to-day

business when you're just going to get more stick-ons for your ostomy. It can be something like that. So definitely know what those are. We talked about listening to the radio, watching television. And so for food and water considerations on this is boil water notices, food alerts, you know, and if you have concerns, call your health department, your local health department, or if you have a state or regional one, get ahold of them. But often, as you've seen hugely flooded areas, like Houston and other areas. So think about all the water supplies, the treatment plants, the water system coming out of your faucet is not going to be good for a while.

So you're going to have to either boil water if it's not super contaminated, or you're going to have to live on that gallon of water per person per day. But you're going to get that guidance from your locality, from your health department, from folks like that. So you've got to pay attention. So find out your health department's number, whether it's a local department or a state one, and be able to get in touch with them. And again, not if all else fails, but in addition, also have your emergency management office number. And hopefully during

a disaster or before big storms come in, your locality is going to be pushing out information through the news. If you've signed up for your alert service, like Code Red or some other texting service, then they'll be pushing out numbers to call for help. Educate yourself and your family about food safety. The bottom line is if you're in doubt, throw the food out. We talked about shelf stable, but one thing, and a friend of mine does this too, is say they lose power and there's a storm, well, let's have a cookout so that those steaks,

those burgers sitting in your fridge, if they're not going to last, if power is going to be out, start cooking them up, right? And if it's safe, right? Because you're still using propane, it depends on what the damage is. So there's caveats to what I'm saying. But that's a good opportunity to not let the food go to waste or risk that the food is going to be bad when you do try and use it again, if it's thought at all or gone outside the parameters and what other. So if you've lost power for a bit and you have food, do you know the temperature of your refrigerator? And if you don't, I do suggest getting a thermometer, whether it's one that just sits on the shelf inside or one you can put in there with a little cable and the temperature displays on the outside,

whatever works. But the rule of thumb is if food has been at 41 degrees, above 41 degrees, or power has been off for four hours, then it's generally not good. So in addition to that, during proling power loss, so eat the foods in this order. So first, cook and eat refrigerated foods, right? They're not as cold. If they're frozen, they have a little more time because that freezing has helped preserve them a little bit more. So the first thing you want to do is get the food out of the refrigerator, start cooking it up, make your cold cut sandwiches, do whatever because that's not going to last as long.

Then go to the freezer because it's going to, again, be preserved a little bit more, especially if your freezer is pretty full. It's going to work as kind of a cooler, last longer. And then last, go to those non-perishable foods in the pantry or dry things, you know, chips, shelf-stable, noodles, whatever. Those are your long-lasting go-to ones that you want to really save, those non-perishables. But the first two, refrigerator first, then freezer, then non-perishables. So how do you prep that food?

So we're going to have that hurricane cookout, post-hurricane cookout. We're going to enjoy this food because we know we're out of power. So here's some guides from, and again, these were from our environmental health folks who did the restaurant inspections. So if you've ever seen critical violations talked about on the news, these are the folks that see how well restaurants do or don't clean, prep their food, all that kind of stuff. It's pretty fascinating. Some of the stories you don't want to hear because it's gross, what some places do. So here's some guides from the pros.

Hamburgers and ground meat, 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Poultry, 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Roasts, steaks, and other large cuts of beef, 145 Fahrenheit, which is rare, and 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which is medium. And then you could, you know, go from there if you like kind of the really, really cooked stuff. Fish, just cook it until the meat is like opaque and flakes easily. So not necessarily a temperature, there probably officially is somewhere. But again, you can tell if you've ever made fish or had really

well cooked fish, you know, it flakes right off. It's really good. You can't see through it anymore. It doesn't have that fishy look or smell or taste, hopefully. So that's some quick deals. So I mentioned I used to have well water. Now I'm on city water, but have a septic system, so we're kind of a hybrid.

What if you are in well water and you lose power? How can you prepare for that? What do you do? So the first thing, which I did where I lived before, which was great, I was very generous, but my dad hooked me up with a generator that I didn't need anymore, was have a generator for your well pump, right? So if it's just for your well pump, it doesn't have to be that big. Generally, though, you're going to want a power, especially if it's cold or something,

the well pump, some key things, maybe your refrigerator or refrigerators if you have more than one, and some of the other key systems in your house, whatever helps you have running clean water and keeps your food good. Triage those as you choose. But the key is generator for your well pump. That way you'll still have water. If you're on well water and you don't have a generator before the storm hits, fill your tubs up. So this is good to do even if you're on city water, I would say, but particularly well water, is you can use this tub water for a couple of things. You can use it to get buckets so that if you use the toilet and you don't have water pressure, you can pour it in the toilet and good old gravity and the magic of whoever figured out indoor plumbing will work itself. So you pour it in and it'll flush the toilet for you and get it out of your house. So that improves your sanitation.

You could also use some of it if your tubs are clean and boil it a bit, right, if you need some clean water like that. But primarily, the tub water above ground, but it becomes submerged in flood water, um, that it's gotta be disinfected. So that means you can't really drink it. And the only way to do that is get in touch with your health department. Um, they'll work either directly with you or through contractors or something like that. So, you know, we mentioned Houston and other areas when they've flooded anyone that was on a well, there was some extensive work that had to be done after that to go re-inspect, disinfect, recertify.

All the stuff that comes into probably putting a new one in, but even worse because you know it's contaminated. Imagine what's in all that water between critters and just stuff. So if your wellhead does get flooded over, you got to get it disinfected. So I mentioned that fourth aspect of getting involved. So this is totally a personal choice. With the health departments, you have what's called the Medical Reserve Corps that I mentioned. It's a national program. And it's for medical or non-medical, even though it's the MRC, but that's because it's under public health and medical services. So what can those folks do? You could be a physician, a medical physician, a dentist, a nurse, a physical therapist, an EMT, a paramedic. You could be an administrative person.

And what can they do? They're going to support points of dispensing or pods. And I'm going to do a future podcast, go figure, about points of dispensing or pods like mass vaccination clinics or massive dispensing of medications after an exposure. They can help staff emergency shelters and other public health initiatives, information or investigations. So if you think about any work effort, whether it's related to health and medical or not, you always need administrative folks, finance folks, IT folks. So if you're in any of those categories or anything else, or if you're medically inclined

or have medical experience, reach out to your local health department or state. Again, because there's a mix depending on where you are. In Virginia, there's local health departments that may cover more than one locality, but they're also tied to the state. In some areas, it's just the state. So it just depends on what state you live in and how it's set up and what locality. But highly advise it. It's a pretty well-run program nationally, and there's some cool stuff to be involved in there. So as the local health emergency coordinator, I was overall responsible for that. We had a medical reserve coordinator as well.

And so, again, good opportunity to get involved. I mentioned also community emergency response teams or CERT teams. CERT has, I think, a little bit more of a well-established kind of academy you go through, which is cool. So you get, I think it's a couple weeks, Google it, prove me wrong, or confirm. But it's stuff like this information, a little more broad.

You also get fire extinguisher training, some other kind of like getting folks out, pulling folks out of debris. So it's a lot more hands-on from the aspect of public safety emergency management geared, I would say. The MRC has trainings you do, not as many practical classroom, then go do it in the field type stuff. And that could have involved, I've been out of that for a little bit. But generally, you're going to be given shots every year during flu clinics, helping with tuberculosis investigations, those kinds of things with the MRC. There's a lot of other ways to get involved in your community as well. Volunteer firefighting and EMS is great if you want to give that a shot. And there's, you know, at the higher levels, Team Rubicon and a bunch of other ways to give back or get involved in your community. So we're about a half an hour here of, I think, some good

preparedness things specifically to focus on as well, health and medical considerations. So in summary, make a kit, have a plan, stay informed. If you choose, get involved and by all means, wash your hands. Thank you everyone so much for listening. Penelope KG on Twitter and Instagram, betweentheslides.com. If you're listening here, you found us probably on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever podcasts are played. Also directly from your browser at Blueberry. BLU, B-R-R-Y is the host of this show.

So thanks again. Really appreciate you all stopping by, listening. Hopefully these tips help. Hopefully you all will make a kid have a plan, stay informed, and get involved. Most importantly, thanks for everything. Stay safe out there and Godspeed.