The help that gets there first
Emergency planning tends to be written as though help arrives from outside. Checking on neighbors in an emergency is the part that does not wait. In a town this size, surrounded by mountains, on roads that close, the first help is almost always somebody who lives within walking distance.
Visitors count too. Hikers coming off the Appalachian Trail and people renting a cabin for the weekend do not know which road floods, where the high ground is, or that cell service quits in the gorge. If you host, put the alert sign-ups and the three ways out of town on the refrigerator. If someone turns up on your porch in bad weather, the answer is the same as it is for a neighbor.
That is a scheduling fact more than a sentiment. Crews have to reach us, and the same conditions that caused the emergency are usually the conditions slowing them down.
Which means the most useful preparedness work most of us can do costs nothing and involves no equipment. It is knowing who lives around you well enough to know who to check on.
Build the list before the weather turns
Take a piece of paper and write down the households within a reasonable walk of yours. For each one, note three things: a name, a phone number, and anything that would change how urgent a check-in is.
That last column is the one that matters. Some examples of what belongs in it:
- Someone who lives alone, particularly an older adult.
- Someone who uses oxygen, a CPAP, a nebulizer, an electric wheelchair, or any equipment that needs power.
- Someone whose medication needs refrigeration, insulin most commonly.
- A household with no vehicle, or with a vehicle that would not make it out in bad weather.
- Someone recently moved in, who does not yet know the roads, the creek, or where the water goes when it rains hard.
- A household with young children and one adult.
- Anyone whose mobility would make a fast exit difficult.
You do not need to interview anyone to fill this out. Most of it you already know. Writing it down is what turns knowing into acting, because in an actual emergency nobody thinks clearly enough to compile a list from memory.
Then swap phone numbers with the people on it. That single exchange, done on an ordinary afternoon, is worth more than any app.
Checking on neighbors in an emergency: what to actually ask
Vague good intentions produce vague results. A useful check-in covers specifics:
- Do you have heat, and how long will it hold?
- Do you have water, and enough of it?
- Do you have your medications, and how many days are left?
- Is your phone charged, and do you have a way to charge it if the power stays off?
- Do you need to be somewhere else, and can you get there?
- Is there anyone you are worried about who I could get to more easily than you can?
That last question is the one people forget, and it is often the most productive. Neighbors keep track of other neighbors. Asking it turns one check-in into three.
Say only what you can actually do
The kindest thing you can offer is an accurate promise. “I have a four wheel drive and I can get you to Marshall on Tuesday morning” is worth ten times “let me know if you need anything,” because the second one puts the burden of asking on the person least able to ask.
The same goes in reverse. If you are the person who will need help, decide now who you would call, and tell them so before anything happens. People are far more willing to be asked in advance than most of us assume.
Trade the practical information too
While you are exchanging numbers, exchange a few other things:
- Who has a generator, a chainsaw, a tractor, a truck that clears water, or a well with a hand pump.
- Who has medical training, even lapsed.
- Where each house’s water shutoff and electrical panel are, for the neighbors who would want someone to be able to shut things off while they are away.
- Which houses have pets or livestock that would need attention if the owner could not get home.
Keep this on paper, in a drawer everyone in your household knows about. Phones die, and the information you need most is the information you can reach with no power at all.
The habits work no matter the hazard
Knowing your neighbors covers every hazard in this series and the ones that are not in it. A wreck on US 25/70 can close the road in either direction. A stalled train on the Norfolk Southern line can sit across a crossing and cut one part of town off from another for an hour or more. Water main breaks and outages with no explanation do not fit any of the four categories either.
Knowing your neighbors covers all of it, which is unusual for a preparedness step. Most of them are hazard-specific. This one is not.
Here is a step beyond the basics
If the neighbor-to-neighbor version appeals to you, there is a formal version of the same instinct, and North Carolina runs it.
Community Emergency Response Team training, CERT, is a program managed here by North Carolina Emergency Management. Basic training runs about 20 hours, delivered either as a three-day block or spread across several weekly sessions depending on who is hosting it, and covers disaster preparedness, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations, so that trained residents can help their own neighborhoods safely when professional responders are stretched thin. Ready NC takes responder applications online, and it also takes requests to bring a class to a specific area, which is the relevant part for a community that would need the training to come here rather than the other way around. The program describes itself as open to individuals of all abilities.
Two other things worth doing while you are building the list. Ready.gov keeps separate checklists for older adults and for people with disabilities, and both are worth reading before you write your own version. And if someone in your household or on your street depends on power for medical equipment, tell Madison County Emergency Management in advance rather than during.
Trained volunteers also do the unglamorous work between disasters: installing smoke alarms, helping at public safety events, and getting preparedness information to households that would not otherwise see it.
Do this part this week
Write the list. Names, numbers, and the column that says who needs checking on first. Then walk one of those numbers over and introduce yourself if you have not.
The next post in this series is about the other conversation worth having in advance, the one with the kids in your house about what happens when something goes wrong.
Resources mentioned in this post
- CERT, Community Emergency Response Team, Ready NC: https://www.readync.gov/get-involved/cert-community-emergency-response-team
- Community Emergency Response Team program, FEMA: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/individuals-communities/preparedness-activities-webinars/community-emergency-response-team
- Preparedness for older adults, Ready.gov: https://www.ready.gov/older-adults
- Preparedness for people with disabilities, Ready.gov: https://www.ready.gov/people-disabilities
- Emergency preparedness information, Ready NC: https://www.readync.gov/
- Madison County Emergency Management: https://www.madisoncountync.gov/emergency-management.html