Comstock
In response to our call for blegs, a reader named Lisa Klink writes to ask your advice:
I just started a job at the Red Cross teaching preparedness education. The tough part is convincing people to take action: make an emergency kit, have an evacuation plan, etc. My question for your readers is: You already know that you should be prepared in case of disaster. What would prompt you to actually do it?
Great question. And not so easy. People like me spend a lot of time telling people like you that so many “disasters” they worry about are extremely unlikely. On the other hand:
- 1. Disasters do happen
2. They are often very costly on a number of dimensions
3. That cost could presumably be curtailed by better preparedness, much of which is relatively cheap and easy
That said, you’re reading the words of a guy who lives in New York City, and who lived here during the 9/11 attack, and has two fairly young children, and still never thought it worthwhile to load up a “go bag” with Cipro and cash.
So give Lisa your best advice in the comments section below (and vote up the other comments you think are valid). FWIW, the Red Cross may want to just steal a new crazy/brilliant campaign the Centers for Disease Control unleashed a few days ago, urging preparedness in case of zombie apocalypse. Yes, zombie apocalypse. Yes, the CDC.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
For a few years (before the Great Recession) Florida would suspend the state sales tax for a specific list of hurricane supplies for the first week of June. (or first two weeks?)
I don’t know the overall results, but I know my husband and I bought hurricane supplies then. Home Depot and Lowes and even the grocery stores would have all kinds of eligible items grouped at the front of the stores. There were big signs talking about saving $ because there would be no sales tax and stating the limited dates.
So let’s see -
Create pseudo urgency with limited dates.
Everyone is thinking about it and acting on it at the same time (consumers, planners, merchants).
Make it so easy, all you have to do is grab a pack of batteries and a tarp as you head for the checkout.
Financial incentive (and a little competitiveness? I don’t want to have to pay sales tax next month when my neighbor is saving on it today)
Of course, Florida is not doing this anymore with the current budget situation.
Maybe instead of freaking people out, psych them up?
“Don’t miss your chance to win the Red Cross Blow Me Away Hurricane Preparedness Prize! One random shopper found buying specially marked supplies between June 1st and June 15th will win $10,000!”
“Springfield wants to know if YOU are ready for the zombie apocalypse! On March 20, each city commisioner will be traveling the city starting from a random address. They will be knocking on doors and if YOU are the first Prepared Citizen with a zombie preparedness kit containing these 5 items you will win FREE [pizza for a year from this helpful sponsor]!” Well, maybe not, you don’t want people opening their doors to strangers, but something fun. I thought the CDC zombie link was great.
Suck people in thru the kids. Make a school project – talk about preparedness, send home lists, have each child bring in a picture of their family’s kit and give prizes for the most thorough, must fun, etc. Then have those winners go on to a city wide contest.
As a long time RC volunteer, and husband to a wife in the Emergency Management field, who also does private consulting to families looking to create a disaster plan, I can tell you it is very difficult to get people interested because, for the same reason people speed on the highways, they think it’ll never happen to them. Even here in Southern California, everyone speeds, and most everyone doesn’t have a emergency kit, or even plan.
But when someone gets a speeding ticket, they tend to drive slower for a bit, and when a disaster happens – even elsewhere, if it gets enough media attention – people become more interested in preparing.
When my wife and I decided to start consulting, we started with the idea of creating kits for people so they wouldn’t have to worry about what to put in it – we knew what was really essential and what was just a waste of space (most kits are mainly small bandages). But creating a really good kit can get expensive, and it requires upkeep/replenishing, and the average person isn’t going to fork out that kind of money, especially when they think it will never happen to them.
So we decided to focus on helping people make family plans for a disaster – something that is actually free if you just sit down and do it yourself, it just takes time and thought. But most people don’t really know what to do or take the time to do it. So we would be able to walk a family through the myriad of possibilities, and they would receive a comprehensive plan and any references/resources they would need.
When we first thought to do this, we held a focus group of family friends and showed them a video on what to expect when the big one hits SoCal, which really hit home with everyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opXZY1zZ8xk
Then we showed them what we could do to help them prepare for something like that, and asked them if they thought it would help, which they all agreed it would. We asked what they would be willing to pay to have a plan like that and we got a wide range of answers, but everyone agreed that they would be willing to pay some amount of money for such a service. Because we wanted their honest opinions, we let them know we weren’t selling them anything, just collecting information. But, even though we never followed up with them to sell the service, no one ever contacted us from that group to ask us for help.
So, I guess what I’m getting at is, that even if people do think it’s important to prepare and do see the actual potential for what might happen, they are still going to think it’ll never happen to them.
You incentivize them. Isn’t that the point?
Also, they don’t have to be interested, in order to be better prepared (by having a kit.)
Get donations or fire a union rep, and have the police\firefighters give away pre-packed prepkits, and the “smart” crowd will beat a path to your door, rather than give up something free. Maybe have “Deluxe Prep Kits” available to sell to late-comers or snobs.
Sell them through the schools. It’s probably a better money-maker than chocolate or magazines. They already do 1st aid kits, why not this?
Throw a talk circuit lecture about preparation, and provide free ones to those that show up, and catalogs for them to give their friends.
The problem is you’re trying to push what is essentially a lottery, but all your selling points are the reality of how bad a decision that is:
“Spend money on something you’ll probably never use! Pure Waste: a great investment! And on the unlikely chance you do need it, it’ll be at the worst time in your life . . . and, for all your preparation, you still might die a horrible, horrible death. Neither will be actually offer you any hard evidence that the fuss is worth it. Buy now!”
The problem isn’t people, it’s the continued couching of these things as all-or-nothing propositions (I’m also looking at you, health “insurance”) when the better approach is to smoothly make the desired behaviors part of the fabric of your life. And part of *modern* life, too; far too much disaster planning seems woefully outdated, as if we’re living in the rural 1920′s. Is having food for 2 weeks *really* going to be a deciding factor compared to 1 week or 3 days (or 0 days and just having a better evacuation plan)?
No, what you’re really lacking is the NON-disaster planning for these things. If you want people to have 14+ gallons of water ready at a moment’s notice, give them an idea of what to do with it when they *aren’t* in the middle of an emergency. Let them know how to organize the food they *already* buy so that it can more easily be taken in an evacuation, or give them a more creative thing to do with MREs than leaving them to sit on a shelf for 5 years to expire before throwing them out. I certainly have my own ideas for that sort of thing, if anyone cares to hear them, but it’s not difficult to come up with your own.
I would like to think that if I lived in an earthquake prone area or tornado alley or something, I’d be more prepared. As it is, I haven’t personally faced any disasters, so, to me, they are quite rare. We get a ton of snow once or twice a year, so that’s about all I prepare for.
I’m much more worried about being stranded while driving through the country, so I have some food, water, lights, and such in my car. Just seems like a more likely scenario.
It sounds like you’re already preparing for the most significant disaster that is relevant to your location.
Your car kit sounds okay, but I’d add a blanket (and not out of reach, since you might not be able to get to the trunk of the car if you’re stuck in a snowdrift) and a first aid kit (a pair of gloves and a few big gauze pads, not a box of little band-aids—any driver might encounter a car wreck).
Are you set up for being snowed in at home? Do you have an alternate source of heat, if the power goes out in a blizzard?
Do you always have a few days’ worth of food in the house? That sounds like a weird question to people who go grocery shopping once or twice a month and really stock up (at any point in time, my family could probably eat for two or three weeks without anyone leaving the house), but there really are people who only keep one or two days’ worth of food in the house. Low-income people might not be able to buy a lot of groceries in advance, and people who eat at restaurants for every meal may not have any food in the house at all. We have an elderly relative whose grocery shopping includes little more than cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, bread, and butter. She eats toast for breakfast, and eats lunch and dinner in restaurants. If she were stuck at home, she’d end up hungry before long.
I think the “war games” method of teaching what to do in a disaster is a good idea. At the same time, a lot of people may be making the wrong plans. I have noticed several things over the past large disasters that I think need to be corrected for future disasters….
1) In Japan, people were standing in long, long lines in order to…charge their cell phones. Communication is vital in such cases. Families get separated. Extended families are worried sick. Right now, there is virtually a different charger for every type of phone. Consider that in an emergency, not only would you have to charge your phone, but you’d have to make sure it was the right sort of charger. RECOMMENDATION: Standardize all cell phone chargers.
2) After disasters, it seems there is a HUGE demand not just for water, but for ICE (after all, people need it to keep foods and medicines cool). RECOMMENDATION: Design water bottles such (or just put less water in them) that they can be FROZEN. These bottles can then be used to keep food cool…and, when they melt, can provide water. Kill two birds with one stone.
3) Evacuations can be about as bad as simply doing an “vertical evacuation” (I heard this from some guy on the radio one time). That is, which is best when a hurricane is bearing down on you: Sitting for HOURS in horrific gridlock on the interstate (including running out of gas)…or moving into a solid, high-rise building which is above any projected flooding and likely to withstand the wind? Me? I’m either going backroads or finding a strong concrete building and going upstairs with my water, food, etc. RECOMMENDATION: Depending on the traffic, you may want to just find the right place to ride out the storm–PLAN AHEAD.
4) In Florida, hurricanes come almost invariably at the hottest time of year. To keep cool, consider using your car’s A/C for a few minutes.
5) In most disasters, electricity goes out. Wouldn’t it be cool if your CAR had a simple “plug-in” that allowed you to use your car as a household generator? Want to watch TV to see what’s going on? Need A/C to cool down the house? Need electricity to boil water? Just plug-in to your car and–viola!
6) You know how a station can send a message across the screen while you’re watching your TV show? I wonder if there is some way to do a similar things for the internet and one’s cellphone (perhaps by ZIP Code, area, state, region, etc.)? If so, we’d likely get to more people more quickly, since if high school is any indication, most kids are messaging half the time.
7) To borrow from Rumsfeld, there are “unknown unknowns.” We can plan for a number of disasters. But then there are those disasters (foreign invasion, nuclear attack, aliens!, zombies!) that are so far outside what we usually prepare for that we are likely not going to be nearly prepared enough. While this sounds right-wing-militia, it’s not meant to be: Very simply, have a gun for protection. If worse ever comes to worst, there will be people who will leave behind the rules of civilization in order to take advantage of the situation. Hopefully, if people know you have a gun, they will just leave you alone. And in the case of zombies, you’ll likely need a gun anyway!
There is no better place to start then by reading the book “Influence” by Dr. Robert Cialdini. He covers the 6 basics of influence, with plenty of pithy examples. You can’t help but get some good ideas by reading this book!
Scare people a little. I’ve been in Tokyo since 1993. The Japanese government’s poor response to the 1995 quake was a wakeup call to the citizens. People here know they should be ready, but many still weren’t. After the Kobe quake, people realized they will have to initially fend for themselves after a disaster. I remember the department stores quickly had prominent displays of quake-preparedness items. Of course, those displays soon disappeared. But the citizens got the message, I think.
I’ve been ready to evacuate or shelter-at-home since 1993. The backpacks at the doorway, food, water. All based on.. .the California Red Cross earthquake readiness web page.
Now we’re having some trouble with nuclear reactors. You may have heard. Some of my acquaintances panicked and went searching for plastic sheeting and duct tape, to seal themselves in their home. Being prepared, as we are, is one less concern when a crisis looms.