Emergency Preparedness In The Home

Being prepared for emergencies is not always about hurricanes and tornadoes. Earthquakes and forest fires do not have to come knocking for your neighborhood to have a big problem. Lets talk about some of the little things that can happen that can put your home and family at risk.


I have not had the challenge of facing any of those huge regional or statewide disasters myself. We all see them on the news and for many of us, these are things that happen some place else. For those of you many people that have faced these huge disasters, we welcome your comments and wisdom. I will discuss these later, but for now, we will discuss those local things that can happen in our neighborhoods short of national impact disasters.


Certainly if something keeps you from being able to live in the home you have worked so hard to build (be it your house or an apartment or condo) you have at least been inconvenienced and at most faced your own little disaster. We all want our neighborhood to be safe and free of danger.


Here are just a few issues that we can all face in our neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Fires

One evening while working a patrol shift I pulled into my place to get something to eat. One of the conveniences of living in the city I worked in was being able to save money by taking my meal breaks at home. After dinner I got back in the patrol car to go back to work when I noticed a huge amount of smoke rising above the trees next door. I called it in on the radio and grabbed a fire extinguisher from the patrol car. I ran to discover the neighbor two doors up had a dumpster in the back yard for a major clean up. The dumpster was as large as a semi trailer and was full. The fire in the dumpster was just really beginning to rage sending flames twenty feet into the air. It was also sending burning debris skyward which was going to rain down on the neighborhood's sixty and seventy year old homes. If unchecked for just a few more minutes, this fire would have spread to the garage and house at that address. All the homes in the area are close and garages are right against the property lines. The fire extinguisher pushed the flames down for a few minutes giving the fire department enough time to keep this disaster confined to the dumpster area. There was some damage to the neighbors trees and garage, but the fire stayed confined to the lot where the dumpster was. You may find it interesting to note that the neighbors who lived there did not like cops, so they rewarded me by sicking the dog on me for being on their property without permission. Another story for another time.

A friend of mine had a little accident in the kitchen one afternoon while cooking french fries. The result was their home being permanently condemned because of the damage to the home. There was no salvaging any of it.

Natural Gas / Propane

A suicidal man one night decided he would asphyxiate himself by opening up the natural gas line from his hot water heater. He then called his girlfriend (the cause of his sadness) to let her know what he was doing. After a considerable conversation, they decided to sleep on the issue and talk again tomorrow. I can't help thinking that the rather large amount of alcohol he had been consuming might have helped influence his decision to disconnect a natural gas line in the first place. Certainly it had something to do with his forgetting the gas was still feeding into the house at a high rate when he lit a cigarette blowing the outside walls of the home in all directions. The roof dropped straight down where the walls had once stood. The poor man landed in the middle of the street in front of the house. He survived, but OW! The explosion only affected a few homes, but two of those homes had no windows on the side facing the home that blew up and there was damage to the outside walls of those homes.

About a year ago in Salt Lake City there was an issue of leaking natural gas that caused an explosion in one home. The homes on either side of the home that blew up were severely damaged by the blast and the resultant fire. All three homes were rendered uninhabitable.

How about propane and similar gas products. There are dozens of gas grills in our neighborhoods and not all are being cared for as they should. I had a neighbor that had two larger (25 gallon) propane tanks he used at home for storage. You know, in case the natural gas feed into his home became disrupted somehow. I think it's a great idea, however in this case it became a problem. I got a call from my wife telling me the neighborhood had been evacuated while a leak in one of the tanks valves was being taken care of. The leak put propane gas all around our homes. No damage this time, but we were not able to be in or near our homes for several hours. Propane is a great convienience for back yard grillers and campers, but it is also a very dangerous gas if not managed properly. One of these little bottles can really mess up a neighborhood.

Water

We love water! Swimming, running through the sprinklers, drinking ice water in the summer, washing the car. The list goes on and on. Think about all you use water for during any given day. We take it for granted most of the time, but we use it in almost all aspects of our lives. None of us would think of water as a hazardous material or a threat, unless we have lived in area where large floods have occurred. Then we realize the massive power and potential for destruction when water is not under our control.

It doesn't take a huge wall of water coming at a high rate of speed to cause thousands of dollars of damage. All it takes is for you to be gone for a day and the neighbors sprinkler system to go haywire to create a damaging basement flood. A swimming pool in a friend's neighborhood became a problem for several homes when a big rain storm came into the area. The water came flooding through the back yards, through the pool, and into several basements. No lives were threatened, but lifestyles were set on their ear for weeks because of the little disaster that came to that neighborhood.

Trees

Not long after we had moved to northern Utah we were living in a beautiful old house surrounded by large trees. There were several varieties and I loved living in what I thought was a forest. One night the wind came up and a blizzard ensued. A lot of snow fell and wind speeds in the 60 mph gust range put us all on edge. In the middle of the night we heard and felt a large crash. One of those venerable old trees fell on the roof of the house ripping a third of the roof away as it came down. It was the middle of the winter and our protection from the elements was all but gone.

What To Do?

We need a plan! Whether the disaster is small or large won't matter if we aren't prepared to deal with it. Of course having things in place to avert problems is the thing to do, but in addition, we need to have a plan to deal with problems when they run out of control. Take the case of my friend with the oil fire in the kitchen. Would a fire extinguisher have solved the problem? Probably, if it were the right kind. How about placing something over the pan to cover the flames? If the fire hasn't spread to the walls this might be a good idea. How about throwing water on the pan?

For a little example of what happens when water is thrown on a kitchen oil fire, check out some of the you tube videos on the subject. I have downloaded a video to show what happens. Suffice to say, water on a burning kitchen oil fire are literally explosive! This is what happened to my friend. He grabbed a hose from the front yard and sprayed the fire with water. The result of his actions were similar to what you see in the you tube demonstrations. EXPLOSIVE! After seeing the results of spraying water on an oil fire the answer to the question becomes obvious. Never throw water on a burning oil fire. "The effects can be devastating."

Many "emergencies" can be easily handled if we have a good plan. If we have properly planned for emergencies, we say things after the event like, "that could have been disastrous" and we move on. My friends house fire would have resulted in minimal damage had he had the right plan and equipment.

So what next? We will discuss some of the different issues that we deal with at home and some of the planning that will help us avert disaster. Let' start next time discussing fire in more detail and some plans to avoid fire and how to deal with fire when it comes anyway.

Dan