One of the advantages of spending almost forty years in emergency services is that, after a while, you begin to notice patterns.
When I first became a firefighter, every emergency seemed unique. A structure fire was different from a flood. A vehicle accident was different from a hurricane. A hazardous materials incident was different from a medical emergency. Every situation had its own problems, its own hazards, and its own way of making life miserable.
At least that’s what I thought.
As the years passed and I responded to thousands of emergencies, disasters, and major incidents, I began to notice something interesting. Although every emergency looked different on the surface, they all shared many of the same underlying risks.
It didn’t matter whether I was dealing with a wildfire, a flood, an earthquake, a winter storm, a pandemic, or a long-term grid-down event. The same problems kept showing up over and over again.
Some were more severe than others depending on the situation, but they were always there. That realization completely changed the way I looked at emergency preparedness. Instead of preparing for hundreds of different disasters, I began preparing for the risks they all had in common.
Once I understood those common risks, preparedness became much simpler.
Instead of asking,
“How do I prepare for a hurricane?”
I found myself asking,
“Which of the common risks will this hurricane create?”
The answer was almost always the same. After reviewing decades of emergencies, I identified seven common risks that appear, in one form or another, in virtually every emergency, disaster, and especially during a prolonged grid-down event.
Those seven common risks are:
- Violence
- Injury or Sickness
- Communications (lack of or poor)
- Organization (lack of or poor)
- Dehydration
- Exposure
- Starvation
You’ll notice something that may surprise you. Communications is not listed first.
In fact, if I looked only at emergencies involving serious injuries or fatalities, poor communications would probably rank number one. I have seen far too many incidents where people were injured—or killed—simply because someone failed to communicate important information…or communicate it properly.
So why isn’t communications at the top of the list? Because this list is based on risk mitigation, not incident frequency.
The order reflects two simple questions:
- How quickly can this risk kill or seriously injure you?
- How often are you likely to encounter it?
Those two questions determine the priority.
Throughout the rest of this series you’ll see that same philosophy repeated over and over again. We prepare first for the things that can hurt us the most and that we are most likely to encounter.
Let’s look at each of these common risks individually.
Violence
Violence is the first common risk because it can permanently change your life in a matter of seconds.
During any emergency there will always be individuals willing to steal, intimidate, or harm others for their own benefit. Most people are decent human beings, but it doesn’t take very many criminals to create a dangerous situation for everyone else.
The reason violence occupies the top position has nothing to do with fear. It has everything to do with consequences.
A year’s worth of food storage has no value if someone takes it from you. A carefully prepared emergency plan is meaningless if you cannot protect your family long enough to implement it.
Violence has the potential to end everything else you’ve worked so hard to build.
Problem: If you cannot protect yourself, your family, and your supplies, someone else may decide they belong to them.
Solution: Develop the ability to protect yourself and your family. That includes acquiring appropriate defensive tools, learning how to use them safely and effectively, and perhaps most importantly, learning how to avoid situations where violence is likely to occur.
Preparedness is not about looking for a fight. It’s about making sure your family survives one if it finds you.
Injury or Sickness
The second common risk is injury or sickness.
Think about any emergency you’ve ever experienced. How many different ways could someone have been injured? How many opportunities existed for someone to become sick?
The answer is usually…quite a few.
A simple cut can become infected. A minor illness can become life-threatening if medical care is unavailable. An injury that would normally require a quick trip to an emergency room may have to be treated at home.
In a prolonged emergency, your ability to care for injuries and illnesses becomes one of the most important survival skills your family can possess.
Problem: Without the ability to recognize and treat injuries or sicknesses, family members may become incapacitated or die from conditions that would otherwise be manageable.
Solution: Build a well-stocked medical kit, learn how to use it, and develop the knowledge necessary to prevent illness before it begins. Safe drinking water, sanitation, hygiene, and basic first aid are every bit as important as the supplies themselves.
Communications (Lack of or Poor)
The next common risk usually surprises people.
If you asked me which single factor appeared most often in emergencies involving serious injury or death, my answer would probably be communications. In incident after incident, I found that someone either failed to communicate important information or failed to communicate it effectively. The result was confusion, poor decisions, unnecessary injuries, and sometimes fatalities.
There are really two sides to communications. I refer to them as the hardware and the software.
The hardware is easy to understand. Radios, cell phones, batteries, antennas, repeaters, and all the equipment that allows us to communicate.
The software is far more important. It includes planning, procedures, training, leadership, knowing who communicates with whom, when information should be passed, and making sure everyone understands the message. You can own the best communications equipment available, but if nobody knows how or when to use it, it isn’t going to help you.
Problem: Without the ability to communicate, your family cannot coordinate its response to an emergency. Confusion replaces coordination, mistakes become more common, and every other common risk becomes more difficult to manage.
Solution: Acquire reliable communications equipment and learn how to use it. Just as importantly, develop a communications plan before you need one. Decide who contacts whom, what information is important, and what everyone should do if normal communications fail.
Organization (Lack of or Poor)
At first glance this may not seem like a life-threatening issue, but don’t underestimate its importance.
When an emergency occurs, people naturally begin looking for someone to make decisions. If no one is prepared to lead, or if everyone tries to lead, confusion usually follows. I’m not talking about organizing notebooks, checklists, or maps. I’m talking about organizing people.
- Who is responsible for making decisions?
- Who handles logistics?
- Who prepares food?
- Who provides security?
- Who is responsible for medical care?
If you have never discussed those responsibilities before an emergency, chances are you’ll waste valuable time figuring them out while the emergency is already unfolding.
The larger the group, the more important organization becomes. Whether it’s your family, an extended family, your church congregation, or a neighborhood group…people work far more effectively when everyone understands their responsibilities.
The good news is that you don’t have to invent a system. The Incident Command System has already solved most of these problems. While families don’t need to implement the entire system, they can certainly apply many of its principles.
Problem: A poorly organized family or group will almost always respond less effectively than one that has clearly defined responsibilities.
Solution: Develop a simple organizational structure before an emergency occurs. Decide who will do what, and make sure everyone understands their role.
Dehydration
Water is one of the few requirements for survival that cannot be postponed for very long.
Without clean drinking water, your physical and mental abilities begin to deteriorate quickly. Eventually dehydration becomes life-threatening. Drinking contaminated water is often even worse because it introduces sickness at the very time your body is already under stress.
Water isn’t optional. Without it, nothing else on this list matters for very long.
Problem: Without a dependable supply of safe drinking water, you and your family may become incapacitated or die within just a few days.
Solution: Store an initial supply of drinking water and develop the ability to produce additional safe water from natural sources. Water purification should be considered a basic preparedness skill, not an optional one.
Exposure
Exposure is another common risk that people often underestimate.
Extreme heat, extreme cold, wind, rain, and snow can all become deadly if you are unable to protect yourself from the elements. Your clothing and your shelter become your primary defense.
Many people focus on food long before they think about shelter, yet exposure can become life-threatening long before starvation does.
Problem: Without adequate clothing and shelter, exposure to the elements can quickly lead to serious injury or death.
Solution: Make sure every member of your family has appropriate clothing for the conditions they may encounter, along with the ability to create or obtain emergency shelter when necessary.
Starvation
The final common risk is starvation.
Many people begin their preparedness journey by storing food. Yet from a risk mitigation standpoint, food actually comes last on this list. The reason is simple. Most healthy people can survive far longer without food than they can without water, shelter, or protection from violence.
That doesn’t make food unimportant. It simply places it in the proper perspective.
Problem: Without an adequate long-term food supply, you and your family will eventually face hunger, declining health, and ultimately starvation.
Solution: Begin with the foods your family already eats. Build a practical pantry capable of supporting your family for several weeks or months. From there, expand into long-term food storage and, eventually, develop the ability to grow at least part of your own food supply.
Summary
Every emergency is different. A wildfire doesn’t look like a flood. A pandemic doesn’t look like a prolonged power outage. A financial crisis doesn’t resemble an earthquake.
Yet after more than forty years in emergency services, I came to a different conclusion. Although the emergencies themselves may differ, the risks they create are remarkably consistent.
- Violence.
- Injury or sickness.
- Communications.
- Organization.
- Dehydration.
- Exposure.
- Starvation.
Understand those seven common risks and you’ll understand what truly needs to be prepared for, regardless of the emergency you face.