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In the Beginning There Was Man . . . and So the Potential for Disasters Began
Now that you’ve finally got enough toilet paper, and before you start hoarding again, it’s time to ask yourself a few fundamental questions about your personal preparedness.
Disasters have plagued humans since the beginning of time. Recent events have only heightened the awareness of our lack of personal preparedness, evident when thousands of unprepared souls ran to local stores to grab, fight, or hoard all the toilet paper in sight. Children, who’d just recently used their parents’ supply to decorate their neighbor’s trees, are longing for the days when the staple’s new place of reverence in the bathroom is over and they can resume their mischievous antics.
The recent abrupt and humbling stop to our daily lives — due to a microscopic virus — was felt around the world. It started for me in Tokyo when I was en route to Yokohama Stadium for a site audit. Looking out the window of my taxi, I saw a Diamond Princess cruise ship and thought, “Funny, I’ve never seen a cruise ship docked there before.” I didn’t realize until the evening news that the ship and everyone on it were quarantined. What an incredible and iconic memory to the beginning of what would soon become known as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fast forward six months and we’ve made it past the toilet paper panic, Excedrin hoarding, and cleaning supply shortages — well, sort of. Do you still have that lingering feeling of unease about your personal preparedness? You’re not alone. Even as an emergency management professional, I admit that I too ran to the store when I finally made it home from Japan to stock up on supplies — sans the hoarding, of course.
So, what’s the next step for those of us feeling that our disaster preparedness is, well . . . lacking? Will the current pandemic, Hurricane Laura, and the California wildfires inspire us to improve our personal preparedness or will we continue to play the Vegas odds?
Let’s assume that we’re serious and don’t want to get caught with our pants down again without toilet paper. But, how do we begin? Well, we begin simply: by determining what kind of preparedness planners we want to…
