Hello, welcome back again. This time we wrap up our week on disasters and today what I want to talk about is preparing for a disaster. One of the most important ways to promote resilience in disaster is to prepare people in advance for what might happen in families, in schools, in communities, and even nationally or globally. What I want to focus on in this segment is a strategy called Infographics. These are informational posters and online materials that are used to train and prepare people in different settings about disaster. And, they can be used to remind people during a disaster of what they need to be doing. But, they're frequently used in training. And, I've chosen two examples here. One from the center for disease control and another from the national academies, both in the United States. They've developed these kind of info graphics to try to help prepare people for different kinds of disasters. And, we have links to them on the course website so that you can go look at other examples that are available. But, you should also look to see what kind of training materials and infographics are available through other international agencies or your own agencies in your country because those will be tailored to the kind of disasters that are expected in your community. Let's take a look at this one first. This is an infographic focused on tornadoes that was put together by the Center for Disease Control as a training tool. And, what they've done is condense in this one, catchy looking poster, a lot of information, both about the nature of the dangers in a tornado and what to do to and what, and what to watch out for. And, let's just take a look at a couple pieces of this poster. In the upper right side, they have a little section that says, "Look up! If you see any of these danger sides, signs, take shelter immediately." . . A darker green colored sky, a large low lying cloud, large hail, or a loud roar similar to a freight train. For any of you've been through a tornado, you know that these are warning signs that a tornado is, destruction is imminent and you need to take shelter immediately. But, they're telling people: Look out. Another part of the poster, down, sort of in the middle near the tornado part of the picture, says Watch Out! Most fatalities and injuries are caused by flying debris. A lot of the destruction and harm to people. As well as, structures and buildings and tornadoes, is being struck by, the debris that's been sucked up into the tornado and then thrown around. And, it's very important to take cover from this kind of flying debris. Here's another example of an info-graphic training poster. This one was compiled by the National Academies of Science, The Institute of Medicine in the United States after a workshop that was held in June 2013. I was part of that workshop. This was a workshop about what you can do to help prepare for dis, promoting resilience of children in disasters and helping out with children. And, you can see this is a different shape of a poster Actually, you can go again and look at this poster online, download it from their website and they also have copies available at a very low cost if you wanted printed copies of this poster. And, let me just show you a few sections of this poster where they've tried to condense information and guidance into something very usable for training and reminders during a disaster. So, let's just take a close look, so there's the top of the poster called taking care of kids, question mark. And then, the rest of the poster is directed at different audiences. So, here's a part that asks, are you a parent. And, they are suggesting that you, to prepare, you need to know your child's school or childcare provider's emergency plan. And, also know how they're going to contact you. One of the most frightening things that can happen during a disaster is children and parents being separated from each other. And, often that happens simply because disaster strikes in the middle of the day and the parents may be at work and the child is at childcare or school and there's an emerge. There needs to be an emergency plan for how to get in contact with your school, or how the school is, or childcare is going to contact you. In the middle of this section they say, advise parents to stay as calm as you, because the, the moods of parents are noticed by their children. How parents respond will effect their children. If parents stay calm and organized, that's very reassuring to children. They also advise parents if you need to go to a shelter, to be sure to remember your, the medicine for anyone in your family, but in particularly, your children. And, also to bring along small items that for the children to play with, their special blankets and toys, but things that, that might be both familiar to the children and comforting to them. And then, in terms of recovery, they advise parents here to connect with the community, because there are a lot of services available in the aftermath of a disaster, both practical services and social supports of different kind that emergency response teams provide to families and parents. And, also they advise, as we have heard before here, that parents should restart regular routines, that that's helpful to children. Here's another section of this poster where they're focusing on a school and school personnel, so here they say, Are you a school? Then, in order to prepare you need to know the safest part of the school for each type of disaster and where to shelter in place. Sometimes disaster happen with very little warning. And schools have learned this lesson in tornadoes, that there needs to be a safe room. A place that is strong enough to withstand tornado force winds, where children and staff can gather if they have to wait out the destruction of a tornado. And unfortunately, in many schools in the United States, even in Tornado Alley, the part of the country that gets a lot of tornadoes. We do not have enough of these safe rooms that are built to be really strong, to withstand tornado force winds. But, more and more of these are being built since the tragedies like you've seen with, the tornado in Joplin, Missouri or the tornado, or more in Oklahoma in recent years, so these safe rooms are important. Also they advise schools to practice. What is, practice the safety response for what do you do if there's a fire. What do you do if there's a tornado, or any other kind of disaster? So, that everybody is comfortable with what they're supposed to do, and they actually drill and practice what to do in the case of different kinds of emergencies. They also advise here that, schools can put together, evidence based disaster recovery programs. And you, they, schools can find lots of information and advice online about what they can do. And, also schools should work with parents so that they know how to handle, connect with parents and how to handle children in emergencies. And, especially, this can be important for children with disabilities 'cause they may have special requirements in the, in the case of an emergency response. And, it turn, in the recovery section, they also, again, emphasize that it's good to return to normal. It may not be the same normal as before the disaster but, it's important to get school back up and running and get some nor, normal routines, operating again to help children recover. And then, I just want to close by having you all think about your own life and your community. Do you and your family have emergency plans, and does your community have emergency plans? It's important to know what those are, and to have plans. And, in every community, the kind of planning you need to do will differ. Where I live, we, in Minnesota, we prepare for disasters like tornadoes in the warm part of the year. In the winter, we have to prepare for extreme cold conditions and for snowstorms and blizzards. And, all of our schools and homes need to be prepared in case there's a fire because that can happen in any kind of situation. And, we train for other emergencies too in my community. We train for terrorism, we train for flu pandemics, but we don't prepare for everything, because somethings are very unlikely to happen where I live. We do not have hurricanes here and we also don't have earthquakes. So, we don't spend as much time preparing for disasters that are very unlikely to occur in our area. But, it's important for all of us to pay attention to the kind of disasters that can happen in each of our homes and communities and get ourselves prepared. [SOUND]
