1 "Preparing your organization for an emergency." Presented by: Jeff Sheen and Christy Dunaway. >> OPERATOR: Good afternoon and welcome to the National Council on Independent Living conference call. Without further delay I will turn you over to your host, Tim Fuchs. >> TIM: Thank you, Lisa, and welcome to the second portion of the CIL-NET presentation on emergency preparedness. Today's presentation is preparing your organization for emergency. I'm Tim Fuchs an operations director at the National Council on Independent Living and a staff member of the IL NET project. We do have some new participants so I need to run through these announcements again. Today's webcast is presented by the CIL-NET, a program of the IL NET national training and technical assistance project for centers for independent living, CIL-NET, and for the Statewide Independent Living Councils the SILC-NET. The IL NET is operated by the Independent Living Research Utilization Program known as IRLU at Memorial Hermann TIRR in partnership with the National Council on Independent Living, NCIL and the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living, APRIL. The substantial support for the development of this presentation was provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services Administration under grant number H132B070002 no official endorsement Of the Department of Education should be inferred. 2 First of all in our regular announcements, I want to remind everyone that today's call will be recorded and available on ILRU's website. Also, all your phone lines will be muted now. You will have an opportunity to ask questions during our Q & A session. They are scheduled for 3:25 p.m., 3:50 p.m. and 4:20 and they are slated for ten minutes. You should see a question submission form on the bottom of your webcast screen and feel free to submit those questions at any time. Along the same lines whether you are participating by telephone or webcast, you may E-mail questions directly to me. My E-mail address is tim@ncil.org. That's tim@ncil.org and I'll make sure that your questions are relayed live on the call. The materials for our call are located on NCILs website and I will read this twice, www.ncil.org/training/emergencyprep.html. One more time it's www.ncil.org/training/emergencyprep.html. You may have the material handy and many have them open. Please don't feel like you have to follow along during the presentations. It will be much easier to keep up with the speakers and to go over the material in detail after. If you run into questions after the fact you can always E-mail us and we'll be sure to get back to you with a response. Also, after today's call please take a moment to fill out the evaluation form. It is on the same training page and you will see evaluation form Part Two at the top of the training page for today's call. 3 It only takes a moment to complete. We review and take very seriously every single evaluation form that we receive. Again, because we have new participants today that were not on Monday's call, I want to, again, mention the floods that have devastated the mid-west. If you haven't heard, the Black Hawk in Waterloo, Iowa, was flooded and destroyed. While we haven't heard of any other SILCs as directly damaged as that, we all know the communities were affected and they are facing trying times across the Midwest as they reconnect with consumers in the coming days and weeks. So in addition to our thoughts and prayers, the partners of the IL NET program are doing what we can to help. But we ask if you or your organization are able to contribute and one of the ways we are helping is ILRU is providing a one eight hundred number to allow centers and their staff and consumers to stay in touch. NCIL on our end is offering financial assistance during our disaster relief fund. It was established after the hurricane of 2005 and has been expanded to assist centers for independent living. It was not contingent on just NCIL, it's for all centers. It's to cover the gap between insurance coverage and losses. Again, if you are able, please consider donating to the fund. It is tax deductible and we don't take any administrative fees and one hundred percent will go to centers that are destroyed. You can do so by contacting me, again, at tim@ncil.org and the 4 checks will be made out to NCIL relief fund. We're getting close, I promise. On July 1st, ILRU is sponsoring another webcast and it will be offered by Lex Frieden. Check your E-mail and the ILRU website for participating. Also ILRU has created a blog on disability911.org. That's the website we mentioned on Monday's call. It is new and it's fantastic. ILRU will be posting answers to any questions that we don't have time for today. You can also go to directly to the website, that's disability 911.org and post questions in the comments section and we'll respond. Once you get to the website, follow the link to disability 911 blog. Thanks. And back to today's presentation, Preparing Your Organization for an Emergency. With us today we have Christy Dunaway, she's director of LIFE in Mississippi. She knows a thing or two about running an organization. And returning from Monday's call we have Jeff Sheen. He is the Progect Director from Utah State University. And Richard Petty program director of ILRU. Without any more from me I will turn it over to Jeff to give you a brief review of Monday's presentation. Jeff. >>JEFF: Just a quick review of some of the key points for those who were not able to join us. We talked very specifically about things that centers with disabilities can do to assist the consumers they serve in being prepared for an emergency. To start that off, Richard had a discussion about the importance of 5 being prepared and the opportunities centers have in their communities about the need for individuals to take responsibility for being prepared as possible. Some of those activities included getting together and having group workshops and discussing what should be in a kit and putting together basic survival kits. When we talked about activities that centers could do we wanted to make the point that it does take some in addition staff time and resources and you need to balance your efforts in this area with the other things centers are required to do. Putting them into exiting news letters and make time in those existing activities to discuss emergency preparedness. Another key point is preparing for an emergency is on going process. It's not something you spend two solid weeks doing and you are suddenly prepared for anything. It is a matter of working on a regular basis to become more prepared today than you were yesterday and that could be something as simple as buying a flashlight after this call and having batteries for it. That makes you more prepared than the beginning of this call. We want to emphasize not to be overwhelmed. To take a step at a time. Use the checklists that are available on the Internet. Disabilities 911 and others and go one at a time to get your consumers to go through them in a way they don't get overwhelmed. If folks get overwhelmed they stop preparing. They throw up 6 their hands and say it's too much. Any step in the right direction is good. We also talked about the pros and cons of community registry. Make sure that individuals understand that if you do register with your local government as a person with a disability that it does not reapplication the need to be personally prepared. It does not mean you will be first on any list for assistance. We want to make that point clear. Richard had a discussion on shelters and what to expect if you had to evacuate to a shelter. Avoid shelters at all possible and be prepared at all possible in other was. All these things are covered in more detail in the guides that are available on the training website. So with that, that's a brief review and I will turn it over to Christy. >> CHRISTY: Thank you, Jeff. Hi everybody, good afternoon. I want to start by saying that I do not have any professional experience in disaster preparedness and planning. The experience that I have gained has all been in the two and a half years since the hurricane that hit our gulf coast in August of 2005. Before that time, we did not have an emergency plan. The wide stance in BILOXI they knew what to be prepared for and they had sorted of a plan for their office down there. Us not having a plan only hindered us, particularly in the few days after the hurricane struck. The worst part of it was frankly, not being able to communicate 7 with my staff and not knowing whether or not they had evacuated, whether or not they were alive, and in some cases, if they were founded. I had staff swimming for their lives from their homes as the flood waters came in from the hurricane. So we realized immediately that we couldn't ever let that happen again. We had to get prepared. In preparing for future disasters, we went back and remembered what had taken place in the few days of Katrina and how we felt and what our biggest concerns were. The primary problem was communication. So that is a large part of our disaster plan that we have in place now. Let me start by saying that our disaster plan is ours. It's meant for Mississippi and consumers in Mississippi that we serve. It is based on some tried and true practices, a lot of which you will find in the information that's listed on the website here and the documents that ILRU has produced. But it is our plan and it's meant specifically for us. So the things I'm going to tell you today that we have done to make it easier for us may not necessarily work for you but I recommend you try them or look into some other option that might work for you. Without an emergency plan if a disaster strikes you are going to be confused, you are going to be up in the air about a lot of things and you are going to have a hard time in just getting started on fixing the problems that have occurred and how to get 8 moving and get on to the next day. So, it's imperative that you have a plan and all staff members are a part of that plan. Our emergency plan was developed pretty quickly after CAT and we have reviewed it and made changes to it at least on an annual basis. First of all, know how to contact all of your staff. There should be at least two people within your center who have access to phone numbers, cell phone, home phone numbers and emergency numbers for all of your staff members in your office. I tell you that immediately following Katrina for several days, I actually -- was in contact with my BILOXI staff with her mother who lived in New York City because our cell phone lines were down, land lines were tied up or down. We found it easier for people in Mississippi to use their cell phones to call outside of the state. So I actually spoke to a mother up in New York. So again, I encourage you to have three different phone numbers for all of your staff. Make sure two of the staff members Executive Director or with whom you select has access to those phone numbers so you can act them in case of an emergency to see what's going on. The other thing, too, we were very fortunate, we were able to access our phone messages at our office. We did not have electricity in Jackson for many days or phone service. We could access phone messages. It wasn't an actual answering machine. 9 If you don't have voice mail, I encourage you to get voice mail and throw away your answering machine if you can. It doesn't require electricity. You should be able to check your voice mail mess annals remotely from where ever you are. We communicated with one another and our consumers by the voice mail system about ten days of Katrina. I was able to change the message remotely and ask my staff to contact me or to leave a message and tell me they were okay and, of course, I will able to check the messages to check on consumers and leave them messages that we were close and if there was an emergency they could contact my cell phone number. So voice mail is preferred. We have a thunderstorm in Jackson so if you hear that thunder, I apologize. The next thing we did was set a place to meet, all of the staff to meet in a few days. That's important that you do. We had not done it. It just so happens that we have worked well enough together for a number of years that we knew that somebody would show up at the office whether we had electricity and water or not. So the day after Katrina, about six of us just happened to show up that morning. But not everybody knew to do that. So we recommend that you set a place to meet within a day or two at your office or at another location just so that you can check on people's personal damages and office and is set a plan for how you plan to serve the consumers. 10 Our consumer data happened to be stored off site so we were able to contact all of our consumers in south Mississippi as soon as possible, as soon as they started get land lines back up and cell phones back up we were able to contact our consumers pretty quickly. We use the data program that many centers have. Every have has a data center to catch your data. Whatever kind you have fiend out whether you can store that data off site remotely. With the data program we have we can hit F 2 and it shoots it to the data storage off site. What that allows me to do was I believe able to contact them as soon as our phones and electricity came back up and asked them, do you have the BILOXI data, yes we do. Can you got it to me in Jackson? So they e-mailed it to me and it took about 30 minutes but they taught me how to download it into my program so I had access to all consumer data so we can call and check on people. I encourage you to store your data off site if you possibly can. I also encourage you to keep supplies at each of your offices. Have your own emergency preparedness kit at your office. That includes, water, food, batteries, hand crank radios. Basic things like that that you would have personally if you were evacuating in a disaster. Have the same thing at your a us because you will need them. Finally, the other issue that we had was with payroll, doing our electronic drawdown and things like that. We have since encouraged our staff to use direct deposit. It's a little bit 11 more work on me and our bookkeepers, but it's a lot easier for the staff. They don't have to worry if they'll receive a check in the mail. I was able to do it from a remote location. Needless to say, the hurricane hit on the 29th of the month. It was at the ends of the month. Most people had no money left and waiting to get their checks. We were fortunate that many of the staff members had direct deposit and could get to their accounts. They had debit cards and could use them to purchase supplies they may have needed immediately after the hurricane. So again, I encourage you to have -- if you possibly can, have your staff on direct deposit. Also you need to develop a relationship with someone possibly in a different state that you trust that could do a drawdown for you or could remotely do direct deposits. Maybe it's your bank. Maybe they have a branch in another state that can help you with that. But if you don't have electricity, cable, phone lines, you can't take care of that. So I encourage you to have someone else in a different state that you trust to help you with that. Frankly we have a good rapport with our bank and I can call on them and they'll call someone in a different town to help me if that's what I needed done. Just to recap, we didn't have a plan before Katrina. I wish we had a plan before Katrina. It was a difficult situation. We do have one now. Please, create a plan for your center. Make sure 12 that you seek input from all your staff. Involve them in the planning and your board members so that you will be able to keep up with what's going on and not get quite so overwhelmed when a disaster comes. Having said that, you will become overwhelmed but it will be a little bit less difficult if you have a plan in place that you can stick to and that covers everything you will have to think about and worry about in the event of a disaster. So I'm sure I didn't cover everything, Jeff. I'm sure there are some other components of the plan that people should have. Are there other things, Jeff, that we need to include? >> JEFF: Yeah, I just jump in real quick. In Appendix 1 in the preparing your organization guide on the website, it's basically a template of key components that walks through some of the things Christy has mentioned as far as communication and record storage but also some in addition items I will hilt. As you go through the guide you can see how it serves as a template. One of the key factors in developing your plan is deciding who is in charge of what. Communicate and get your plan in writing. Depending on how big your center is, there could be a lot of assumptions made. Doing some live training from the same center and when I said who is in charge of making sure there are batteries. They all pointed to each other. There's a template to assigning people to specific tasks that will make your life easier in the event of an emergency. 13 There's also a safety audit checklist for preparing your facility. Walking through your facility, looking where your computers are housed, can they be brought up from the floor to make them safe from water damage. Are heavy pieces of furniture secure to the wall. Things of that nature. That's an important very low-cost thing to do. Does everybody in your center or certain key people know where the utility shut off is and is that posted? Do you have the authority to turn them off? Many share buildings with other tenants. Talk with them and see what they are going to do in an emergency and communicate and share those tasks. Make sure the fuse box is located in one of the other tenant areas that you have access in case of an emergency. Some other things in the template go into preparing your staff. Do an audit and see what staff members are trained in first-aid and have them trained as Red Cross volunteers. Practice your drills and plan. If you have a wonderful plan that sits in a binder and nobody is aware of it, it will do very little good in the event of an emergency so practice what's in your plan. And another part is evacuation and transportation. Being aware of who will be on site at any time and what you need when it's time to evacuate essential vehicles and the keys and who has permission to do that. Christy has done a good job and I encourage you to check the appendix for more information. It's time for Q & A. 14 >> TIM: Let me say first, if we have missed anything on the webcast and the captioning, I apologize. But if our presenters could slow down just a little bit when they speak so the captioner could keep up, I would appreciate it. If you did miss anything a full archive of the webcast will be available on ILRU's website within at least and probably much less, 48 hours after the end of the call. Thanks. So Lisa, do we have any questions from our telephones? >> OPERATOR: If you have a question at this time, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. If you have any questions at this time please press 01 on your telephone keypad. There seems to be no audio questions at this time. >> TIM: Okay. I have a couple from our webcast participants that I can start off with. The first questions comes from Francis in New York and she asked, we are a small SILC and motivated to create an emergency plan for our CIL but with limited resources are there ways to get the emergency preparedness needs, training and consumer needs? Christy or Jeff are you aware of any grants like that from FEMA or other agencies? >> CHRISTY: I am not aware of any grants from FEMA. However, I am aware of some other national correspondences. National organization for community service. They have a new vista volunteer program and they have some funding, I believe, 15 available. Also the citizen corps, again another citizen corporation. We received about 200 -- well emergency kits, their backpack that are filled with water and flash lights and batteries and basic needs like that. We received -- actually we have gotten 200 of those in two different allotments. So that's citizen Corp. So I encourage you to go to their website and see if you can see a grant there. We have a relationship with our state commission for volunteer service so that's how we were contacted by that. >> JEFF: Tim, this is Jeff. I am not aware of any federal grants at that level, although in Utah what we have done fairly successfully is use local grants and also we have worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security Utah's division and each state should have a department that works with the department of homeland security. They have good training and they provide it for free. I would check that. Also some of our centers have worked with local companies and others for donations for basic supplies to keep at the center or to provide to consumers. For example, getting several pal lets of bottled water to be able to distribute in small kits or to keep at the center. We had some companies that donated some backpacks and nutritional bars. So search the local and state level for offers of free training or for donations or some small grants to do those things. >> CHRISTY: One more place, Tim, I don't know if there are 16 Wal-Marts up in New York, I assume they are all over the country. The Wal-Marts, they do a thousand dollar donation so go to your local Wal-Mart and talk to them about how to get your hands on that thousand dollars for community donations. They also like to donate product somewhere else the cash. That's another good place. In our BILOXI office has tapped into that money and. >> TIM: Great tips. I have one more webcast question before we get back to Lisa for telephone questions. This one comes from New York and she refers to what I know a lot of you probably have in your communities is that is a one-stop information line, a 311 and she asked, I'm wondering how reliable this resource is in an emergency and if such lines that are present in other cities are equipped to handle emergency calls. >> JEFF: We have 211, that's our information and referral line in Utah. Really I would suggest you use those information lines well ahead of any type of emergency and use them to find and locket preparedness resources. I don't know if ours is equipped at haul to handle emergency questions. Depending on the disaster they most likely will be impacted as well with. We have encouraged the people in Utah to use the 211 versus an emergency response mechanism. >> CHRISTY: I completely agree. We also have 211 in Mississippi. Muted way was establishing it right before Katrina hit and they put a rush on it and got it up running faster than anticipated. 17 I would not use it as an emergency call. As Jeff mentioned, I would use it as preparation in Stead. >> TIM: Thank you. Lisa do we have anyone on telephone queue at this moment? Let me remind everyone you can press 01 on your telephone keypad to ask questions. Lisa anyone? >> OPERATOR: Is there any questions at this time, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. One moment. >> TIM: Sure. >> OPERATOR: First question comes from dawn. Go ahead, dawn. >> CALLER: This is dawn from the Iowa SILC. I was wondering if any of the presenters knew if RSA has provided funding for any communities flooded out during hurricane Katrina and would it be an apse for us in Waterloo. >> CHRISTY: This is Christy. Yes, they did, dawn. Hurricane Katrina hit us on August 2-9Dth and they were able to provide me with additional funding. It was a nice amount and they simply put it into my drawdown beginning October one of the new federal fiscal year. I understand that those funds were some training funds or something like that that apparently had not been used. I'm sure that not every center in the country uses all their money every year so I'm sure some goes back in. But, yes, RSA was able to provide me with some additional federal funding. It was a one time only for the next fiscal year and it helped us to purchase things we had lost with the BILOXI office being flooded. 18 >> CALLER: Did you contact them or they contact you or how much money you needed? >> CHRISTY: They contacted me. I was in touch with them anyway. They had contacted us to see how we were and what was going on and what they could do if we needed anything. So they actually contacted me and that was my Lee San what made that contact. I would definitely contact them and as far as a list, no -- I did have to do a budget for it and that was easy enough. I was not allowed to purchase equipment. I could purchase a two-year cell phone plan because we don't know when the phones would come up down there. Things like that. Fairly lenient, actually. The only thing I didn't ask for was consumer service funds because we were having so many donations coming in I thought those needs would be met. So I don't know if they would have let me use it for consumer funds. >> CALLER: P I think Waterloo is looking to replace the equipment they lost. Kenny is on this call, I'm sure. I will get with you later on this. >> OPERATOR: Next question comes from Kevin. >> CALLER: Yes, this is Kevin for the e have in Charlotte, North Carolina and Christy I just had a question for you. After the initial hurricanes hit you received donations that came in on a steady basis. I'm sure the New Orleans center did too. Did you continue to set up a donation account and monetary on an on going basis in case a storm hit in the future. Anything set up for 19 that? >> CHRISTY: No, actually there's not. We did receive a massive amount of donations and I want to take the opportunity while I have a floor here, the disability community in this country is remarkably generous and we got and a lot of donations were in equipment needs. We did receive some cash donations probably about 25,000 that was spent easily within the first six to nine months. We did not set up any kind of emergency fund like that afterwards, which is a good idea, thank you. >> CALLER: Okay. >> TIM: And Lisa, if there are remaining questions we will have time for one more. If there's more than that, we will hold it for our remaining Q & A sessions. >> OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Gerald. >> CALLER: This is Gerald and I'm with CIL in Berkley. I was in contact with Christy quite a bit. My question is we are a fairly large center, as you know, are there any centers because the centers are accessible are there a lot of centers looking at them not making them one of the rescue areas in case of a disaster. >> CHRISTY: We considered it. Our state office here in Jackson is a good size office. Of course, our staff fill it up. We are hoping -- we are actually doing campaign noun to raise enough funds so we can purchase a generator, a natural gas generator for this building. The building is already wired for it. We could 20 turn this building actually into a small shelter if necessary. It is fully accessible. We don't have a roll-in shower but we do have a full bathroom. We also talked about that bathroom and it is fully accessible but have not removed the tub. My board is interested in the possibility of this location since it's the largest of the eight. Being a temporary small shelter for consumers if needed. It's a matter of funding at this point. >> CALLER: Okay, thank you. >> TIM: Before we go back to the presentation I just want to say if we did not get to your question, I apologize. We do have two more Q & A sessions. So if you have a remaining question, please write it down for the next session and you are always welcome to E-mail questions to me at tim@ncil.org. At this point, thanks to everyone for asking questions and thanks to Jeff and Christy for responding. Christy I turn it back over to you to be part of your community emergency plan. >> CHRISTY: This is a little bit more difficult. We were not a part of our community emergency plan. We tried desperately to become part of the emergency plan immediately following Katrina. And frankly, had some bad experiences. A lot of the staff in the state were not affected that badly by Katrina. Yet there were shelters all over the state of Mississippi for people who had evacuated from New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast. 21 But our staff goes to the shelters find the local shelter and is go there and find people with suicide disabilities that might need assistance. Whether it's located equipment needs or peer supporters. Frankly, we were turned away by many of the Red Cross shelters. They did not want our help. They used excuses like privacy laws and lack of training, et cetera. We knew there were individuals inside their shelters with disabilities who could use assistance frat center. We knew we were more experienced in providing some of the assistance than the shelter was yet they turned us away. So to bypass that. Once things settled down here I required all of my staff to go to their local Red Cross and become a Red Cross volunteer and go through their training. We had no problem with that. Of course some of my staff were limited and not able to go through the CPR training, for instance. But they actually went to the training but could not perform in the CPR training. But all of my staff, two staff members in our offices are certified Red Cross volunteers. So in event of another disaster, they will be called upon as Red Cross volunteers for assistance. In most of those areas they have done a really good job of developing a better relationship with the Red Cross people there and so the Red Cross is aware of what their special talents are and special expertise is in serving people with disabilities and we hope that will be used. 22 So we recommend that you go and get trained. If, of course, your Red Cross turns you away because you have a physical disability and because they can't think they can train you, you have a civil rights issue on hands. Also, contact your local emergency agency. Every county has an emergency management agency. Find out who they are, where they are. Find out where they are located and meet with them before disaster strikes and do your best to establish a relationship. Having said that, I will tell you that we have tried for two and a half years to establish a good working relationship with the Mississippi emergency management agency and have not been very successful. We were not very successful at it until just recently within we invited Cindy Daniels with homeland security to come to Mississippi and she did and she apparently has contacted some local people so when experienced some flooding up in our delta county we were contacted by FEMA asking if we wanted to work in the disaster recovering centers. And we said yes, of course, we would do that. Another issue we had was being a private nonprofit we were not -- we didn't have any kinds of credentials after Katrina. So like the day of the storm when I couldn't reach my staff I get in the car to head to the coast and get turned back by the national guard pretty quickly. And again, I don't know what I was thinking except concern for 23 the staff south of Jackson. I was turned away because I didn't have any credentials. We have since relieved that situation. We were getting a lot of donations in from you guys across the country but I didn't have any storage. I contacted them and they offered me storage warehouses all over the state. That became a relationship with them. Since they are a state agency, they can be credentialed to be not first responders but at least to respond to a disaster. So they are giving me and my staff name badges with our pictures on them so that next time something like this happens I will have this badge and can get into the disaster site. The other thing I would recommend is that all of your first responders in the state like your county emergency agencies, your Red Cross, salvation army and all the others, they need to know and understand what you do as a center for independent living. If you don't already have a relationship with them, make sure they understand what you can provide and what you cannot provide. Frankly, once we did get across that we had some talents in serving people with disabilities is we got dumped on. Somebody published our eight hundred number and if anybody showed up at a disaster recovery center and said even my head hurts or I'm out of my diabetes medication, they would hand them our eight hundred number and say call them, they can help. It doesn't disability related needs that they had necessarily. That was a problem. We hope we have alleviated that since then 24 by educating them about who we are and what we can do. Go on and do site surveys at shelters. Determine if they are accessible. We already know that the majority of shelters are not accessible. Those of you who participated in the call on Monday you heard rich Petty say that we really don't recommend that people with disabilities do not go to a shelter if you can avoid it. If you know where the shelters are and a certified volunteer you can at least be there to offer assistance if you can. The other thing we had to do and I think we did a good job of is being a relationship with our local media so that they understand who the center for independent living is and what we can do and also wanted to make sure they had a plan for disabilities. We had issues before Katrina during the evacuation stage because the local TV station on the coast had a relationship are the deaf service center down there. However, the interpreters had family members and had homes that they needed or wanted to evacuate. And so during the actual evacuation period there were no interpreter services being provided on the TV stations. So what we have recommended and I think they have done is set up some relationships and contracts with deaf centers in other parts of the state so that interpreters who would not necessarily be affected by the disaster could simply go there. Of course, they have to have them, too, which is another issue. If you don't have a relationship currently with your governors 25 office or if you have a governors office that has disaster preparedness your homeland security office or state management agency I encourage you to start with that relationship immediately. It will help you. Our communities are not fully accessible. Our shelters are really bad. We were disenfranchised and treated poorly after Katrina and we must try to avoid that in the future and I have to say that that as much time and effort we put into it in the past two and a half years, should we be hit with another disaster again in Mississippi, I think we would see some things have improved but mostly what we will see that has improved is our awareness of what to expect and what the consumer's needs will be in the result of a disaster and our ability to meet those needs. It's important to be a part of the community's plan because they have to be reminded that people with people with disabilities live in our community and they need assistance during a disaster. We lost entire communities in Mississippi and so people who were formerly living independently and did not need assistance from centers of independent living they lost all community support because of Katrina they needed our assistance after wards. We also doubled serving the consumers in our state. We could not have done that and provided their needs if we did not have good relationships with other organizations in the state that also provided services. So if you have poor relationships now or you have adverse relationships now with some of your state 26 agencies, I encourage you to not necessarily get past that but to at least agree to disagree and move on to ensure that in an emergency you can work together. Because that's how it worked here and frankly, we could not have done it without them. Jeff, do you have anything to add to that? >> JEFF: Yes, I have a few things. As Christy talked as making sure other agencies understand the role of the center and it's CIL that they don't have the understanding that you are a congregate care study. We came across that in Utah. Isn't that where two or three hundred people live? They need to be clear on your role but just as importantly as you are trying to get in these tables and involved in your community plan, you need to take the time to learn their agency and what their role would be in an emergency so you can have more realistic expectations of what they can do. Just remember that there are other disability advocacy groups in your state and community and if you can partner with them and you night in your voice, that can help you get on the table to some centers. You need to look around the disability communities within your state and see how you can partner to get to some of these state-level tables. Now we worked on a couple committees in Utah and we're not found of the language they use. We would like the language to change 27 but the important thing is we are at the table and we can work on the language as we build that relationship with them. The other key thing you can work on as you get to these tables is really helping the agencies like Christy mentioned with the television station understanding the need to communicate public information in a way that's accessible to everyone and to help them understand what that might mean as far as communicating and approaching storm and emergency evacuation orders, shelter information. We found that that's a CIL piece when disability organizations are able to get to the table and explain what it means to communicate in a number of different formats and how they might be able to do that. Offer your expertise on that. And just really strive to become that partner. The reality is there are some tense relationships between some different organizations. But work on them and try to find allies. Get to those tables and use your best advocacy skills to make sure that you get the needs met for people with disabilities in that plan. There is an executive order out for federal agencies to make sure that all federal plans take into account the needs of individuals with disabilities whether that's trickled down to your state or local community, it may be up to you to get those points across. But that's all I had to add, Christy. >> CHRISTY: Thank you. We can go on to questions now, Tim. >> TIM: Sounds good, Christy. I have no webcast questions so 28 Lisa anyone in the telephone queue? >> OPERATOR: The first question. >> CALLER: I'm from Iowa city, Iowa and I work in other centers where I actually made name badges for my staff with pictures and do you thing that would have given you access to a disaster zone or does it have to be a DBR badge and if so, does that badge in any way different from anyone who is a DBR employee? >> CHRISTY: I don't think it has to be a DBR badge but I don't know if that badge you created will work. They were looking for some sort of state relation. Showing that you were some sort of employee of the state. That's what they were looking for. So the badges that have been offered to us through our rehab services are not going to indicate that we are necessarily an employee but they'll have, I think what they are planning to put on there is -- I can't remember the terminology they used but because it will be a state-issued ID badge, that's supposed to work. So I don't know that yours would work or not. I'm sure it would be different in any place. In an emergency, you will find some people who are so overwhelmed that they could just glance at it and wave you through and others take their job seriously and look at it more closely and not let you through. The point is I had nothing but my driver's license and that didn't work. >> CALLER: You did a good job anyway. I have to applaud you all in Mississippi. I was down in Florida the year before and I 29 fully understand what you mean. >> CHRISTY: Thank you. >> OPERATOR: If there are any other questions please press 01. It's from carol. >> CALLER: I think it's actually Cheryl. My question is, you're talking about the general kits ask stuff like that but obviously there are areas where different kinds of emergencies will occur. For instance, I'm in California but we're in northern California up in the mountains and we're surrounded right now be fires and that's probably our most likely. Are there kits that are specific to those kinds of issues and should we prepare for those specific issues? >> CHRISTY: Absolutely usual prepare for those issues. I should have stated up front that a lot of what I'm talking about is based on hurricanes because that's what we know in Mississippi and I know we talked the other day and Richard Petty might jump in here. Each state must be prepared for whatever their emergency is likely to be. For fire emergencies I'm sure there are different things you might need in your kit. I would recommend that you speak with the local fire departments and find out from them what they would recommend there. I don't have very much experience with that, so I'm not able to give a whole lot of input into that except to say that your kit needs to include whatever you or a consumer may need for a three-year period of time if you need to leave your home. 30 The other thing I want to say that the kits that were given to us or prepared we have offered to the consumer to make them disability specific. On the coast, particularly, we have taken up average kits that has radio, flashlight and a bottle of water in it and we have helped the consumer to add to that kit exactly what they might need for themselves. Personal things they may need whether it's catheters, gloves, things like that. >> RICHARD: Cheryl, Christy gave a complete answer but I would like to add a couple points. You also might want to go to disability 911.org and follow the links to Ready.Gov and I believe there are kits, some recommendations specifically for kits for different kinds of evacuations but I think as Christy said, the important thing is to be able to have enough food and water and basic things that you need to be able to live for two or three days away from your home and by that point you should be able to connected into a more permanent system of support or perhaps even be bark in your home depending on the type of emergency you fashioned and if things go well. Also, I think as Christy said, probably the bigger issue is making sure you have items in the kit specifically related to your particular kind of disability. >> JEFF: Let me jump in real quick. On the resources we have listed both on the guides and training side, there are specific tip sheets for what to include in a kit by type of disaster and 31 also by type of disability. So those are some additional resources. If you have a good basic kit, then you can build the specifics around that. >> CHRISTY: I mentioned specifically fire because -- we have earthquakes too, but I mentioned fire because I noticed that it's really difficult to breathe right now for many, many people and I would think that that would make a difference in the type of kit you would assemble. >> TIM: Cheryl, I apologize for making a reference that I'm not sure about. But you may want to contact Louis down in San Diego the region 9 rep for NCIL. I know he dealt a lot of this when San Diego had their fires last year. >> CALLER: Thank you. >> TIM: Lisa, I'm going to go ahead with two questions I have from the web then we can get back to the telephone. The first is written to you Christy and it asks, what contacts did you make and what strategies did you use to obtain the list and locations of potential Red Cross shelters in your region in emergency management associations not wanting to share that information. >> CHRISTY:Typically they don't want to share that especially if they consider it to be a special needs shelter and we don't like the language there but that's what they use. When we went to be trained as volunteers during the course of that training some of the staff were told where the typical 32 shelters would be set up. Now, if it's a major disaster and they have to open more than a small town up in northeast Mississippi might be prepared to open one shelter unless it's a mainly disaster and they feel a need to open a second or third one in which case we would not know unless we just happened to be at the shelter that everybody is aware of. I will say that most shelters are set up in schools, particularly, unfortunately, older schools because they are better built but considerably less accessible than a modern building would be. On the gulf coasting in Mississippi they have absolutely refused to tell anyone where their quote, special needs, unquote shelters are located and they would not give out that information until six hours before the water would start to rise. And we have little or no luck in getting past that issue with them. >> TIM: All right, thanks. I have another question before the telephones. Have you been able to get your emergency management systems to partner or establish MOUs with public and paratransit providers to assist people with disabilities? >> CHRISTY: No, we have not been successful with that. The gulf coast has a good paratransit system. That would be where our biggest disaster would be but further north, Jackson, Tupelo. Those towns I just mentioned do. But to my knowledge they have not been successful in creating an MOU. 33 >> JEFF: I live in rural Utah and we have a smaller paratransit and they have been wonderful. They attended a FEMA session and they have been 2K3W50D at learning how to assist people in our community for people with disabilities. You can make that attempt and it may not always work but we have had some good successful. >> RICHARD: There's an important caveat here and that is in many cities the limited capacity of any transit system and especially those systems with accessible vehicles the capacity is so limited that even with an MOU the likelihood of those systems being able to meet capacity during an emergency can often be quite limited and not only is it important to engage in strong advocacy but also work with the transit system in taking a very realistic look at what is possible, what can be done under what time frames it can be done. >> TIM: Thank you, Richard. Any questions from the telephone. >> OPERATOR: The first question comes on. >> CALLER: I wanted to make a comments and also ask a question. The comments would be in Iowa city we have a reverse 911 and so that if there was a disaster we would be one of the few centers along with the University of Iowa that would be precalled before the general population gets an evacuation order. That maybe something the rest of you might look into because it really gave us about two hours extra that we wouldn't have had otherwise in this last or current disaster. 34 And the question would be what do you do to get the transportation people, the transportation organizations that you have at the same table because they understand that under the law that if you receive federal funding from the federal government for a nursing home bus or something like that you must make it available during times of crisis, like emergencies and how do you find those people and how do you build the relationship with those individuals that are in charge of nursing home van pools and things like that. >> CHRISTY: Well, yes, that is a federal law. As far as bringing them all to the table in Mississippi they have been brought to the table several times before. The state council on mental disabilities has and has funded a coalition that has come to the table. I think it helps establishing relationships with those various entities but in the event of another disaster if one were to strike tomorrow I would not anticipate seeing any change in transportation accessibility. I don't think the relationship has progressed enough to actually work seemlessly in a disaster. >> CALLER: Anything we can do about that? >> CHRISTY: I'm open to suggestion, Jeff, Richard? >> JEFF: I think it's an on going process and we had a good relationship with our transit authority but we just continue to plug along and try to take steps in the right direction with them. 35 >> RICHARD: The only thing I would add is be in contact with them, be at the table with them, don't be the only disability organization there. Make sure that others are there and centers are good at advocacy and like Jeff said, keep plugging away. >> TIM: We need to go forward with our webcast. You can E-mail questions to me at tim@ncil.org or you can hold it until our final Q & A session at 4:20. Over to you Christy. >> CHRISTY: I'm going to be brief here and ask Richard to come in to talk about a new system he has. I want to reiterate some things about communication. Communication is going to be the most important thing in case of a disaster so you know that your staff is okay and your family is okay. So again, use a voice mail system if at all possible, make sure that you have phone numbers for all of your staff so you can contact them and emergency numbers for your staff so you can call them. Communication, frankly, was our biggest issue here immediately following Katrina but I'm going to let Richard tell you about a new system that if we had had it two years ago would have saved me a lot of anguish. >> RICHARD: ILRU is offering to any center that experiences an emergency a toll free telephone line that the center staff and consumers can use as a means of staying in touch. In the same way that Christy had voice mail at her center was able to leave messages for her staff and receive messages from 36 her staff, that at ILRU is available to you and you can contact us either through our website or through any of the E-mail addresses that are on the website or directly by phone. We will set up a toll-free line that you and your staff can use. So if you should find yourself in that situation, we're more than happy to do that. I think Christy's recommendation of having voice mail at your center is your first and best line of defense for keeping in touch of staff and consumers. If you don't have that and can't get that then in an emergency consider the line that we have at ILRU. One other bit of technology something new on the horizon that none of us had at the time of some of the largest disasters in the past is there are social networking sites or blogging sites where families and groups of people keep in touch with one another. Their mess annals go to their cell phones, they go to web pages on computers so you can do text messaging and post messages by computer. One of the most popular is TWITTER.com. It's free and it is generally rather accessible so that as long as the folks in your center have cell phones with accessible text messaging, which is now more available than it was, that is an option and something that can be used. I understand from many people who have gone through disaster that text messaging is available when voice communication is not 37 available on telephones. So that might be an option. Three options. Voice mail, a very good local option that won't cost you much. ILRU toll free line that can be set up and something else that's at no cost one of the social network like TWITTER.com. >> CHRISTY: Texting worked very well here in Mississippi when we were not able to get through on voice. We were able to text. The next thing on the agenda before we go on to our final Q & A and steps in resources is putting the pieces back together. Tim and Richard and Jeff asked me to do this part of it and it's kind of hard to know where to start but I'll start putting the pieces back together is not easy. We were in an emergency mode for weeks after our disaster. It was hard to get everybody to settle back down and begin to get back into some sort of a daily routine. In fact, I would say it was probably months before we all got into a daily routine. The key in getting the pieces back together and getting back to serving and doing what you do as a center, in my personal opinion it's organization. I happen to be a fairly organized individual and my assistant is more organized than me. Between the two of us we were able to establish where everyone was, what they were doing, who was keeping up with the information flowing into the center, where people needed to be, where the worst issues were and somehow or another we managed to keep up with that but it wasn't easy. 38 We had to shift responsibilities for a while. Those people who are typically not independent living specialists or peer supporters became so. You know, I had staff that were project coordinators that had not done peer support in a while down at the shelters talking to people with similar disabilities. So we all shifted or responsibilities for a while. You have to be prepared to do that. The organization part came from me when all of the donations started coming in. We were offered donations right off the bat. Luckily people didn't start sending things that we with couldn't use. We had to get organized because we had so much medical equipment flowing in from all over the country. Without some organization we would never have been able to know who was sending it, where it came from, what was in it, where it went, who used it, et cetera. I hope I did a good job in thanking the donors because that meant more to us than we could say. I hope I did a good job in that but the bottom line was that things were happening so quickly that I know I missed some people. I know there are some individuals and centers out there that I did not have the opportunity to thank that sent it equipment and donations. I think, too, that if you can be organized enough to understand and know what your needs are, you can clearly relate those needs to people who call and ask. 39 Just to relay one of the things that happened with us. One day after the hurricane hit, I did get a phone call or E-mail, perhaps from dawn with ILRU asking what we needed. Frankly, e-mailed her back I have no earthly idea what we need right now. I'm not in that mode yet. I couldn't tell you what we need but it will be extensive when we figure it out. She e-mailed back and said foon. I will tell everybody to send cash. And that was good because we were unsure. Being organized is important. Another thing as far as putting the pieces back together is all of us again were in an emergency mode for so long and it took us so long to get back to a routine that frankly, if you don't take a little time for yourself you will fall apart and not be good for anybody else. I speak from personal experience from working 10, 14, 16 hours day the first couple days after Katrina to the points to where I was walking into my bathroom with two different phones. A cell phone and land line in case they rang and somebody needed something. Finally, after a day or two I would let the phone sit on the table and go into bathroom without them. You have to do that. You need to time for yourself or you will fall apart. The other thing I would suggest is that you do lean on other agencies when you can. There are many good disability organizations out there, profit, nonprofit and state. Lean on 40 them if you can. All of those donations that we received, all those thousands of wheelchairs and other durable medical equipment that came in had I not had a good relationship with our did I want of rehabilitation services and our ARC of Mississippi I wouldn't know where to store all that stuff. But all the agencies were able to open up warehouses and storerooms for us and help us keep it organized. So don't hesitate to call on your board members, their families and your staff members for whatever needs to be done when physically possible. Again, our staff did whatever we had to do at the time to make it work. Nobody was spared. Nobody got out of doing anything that might have been unpleasant. We all just did what needed to be done. It's not easy to put the pieces back together. I would say to, again, take some time for yourself, make sure your staff's needs are being met. I did make the mistake of asking my staff to go out and serve other people quickly before I did a good job of making sure they were okay emotionally and in some cases that was not good. So make sure your staff is okay and that they can go out and provide services to people in need. The last thing someone who has experienced a disaster is needing somebody who is not capable of listening to them and not able to give them clear, concise 41 information about what services are available and what you can do for them. So that's putting the pieces back together and we'll have question and answer in a minute and I turn it over to Jeff next. >> JEFF: Thanks, Christy, so we can take more questions let me be brief and say review the material that has been provided. In particular go to the resource links that have been provided for the different websites that we have reviewed and found useful. We put a description about what each website might have on it to give you a guide on where to start. Simply disability911.org is a tremendous resource. There are article and is resources. So if you go to one website I recommend starting there and remember there is another webcast that will be coming up in July that you will receive more information about that Tim mentioned earlier. Tim, I think we can do some questions now. >> TIM: Thanks, Jeff. Lisa, you can go first. >> OPERATOR: If you have a e request at this time, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Kathleen. Go ahead, Kathleen. >> CALLER: My question -- this is Kathleen from California -- we were interested to find out this question is for Christy. How many staff did you have at your center? >> CHRISTY:We're unusual we are one center but eight offices throughout Mississippi. So the staff we had directly affected by 42 Katrina was pretty incredible. Obviously the BILOXI staff in the that office there were four staff members there and two ores. Our hats bug was hit. It was still a category two storm when it was hit. So a lot of destruction in Harrisburg and three miracle workers there. The meridian office was affected. And the Jackson office, we personally were not as affected as badly. We had no electricity and phones and things like that in Jackson but as far as damage, you know, it was, of course, not near the destruction of the points south of us. So we had a total of 30 staff statewide and I would say half of them were directly affected by Katrina. >> CALLER: We have a similar situation that we have a large geographic area with four offices and four locations. That's kind of unusual in California. Communication was one of our biggest problems. We're spread from point north and south throughout the state. >> CHRISTY: Thank you. >> OPERATOR: Any further questions at this time please press 01 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Kevin. Go ahead, Kevin. >> CALLER: Hey this is Kevin again from Charlotte. In regards to your consumer records when you get back after the storm and you are trying to locate all your consumers, et cetera, et cetera, what was the process of that as I'm assuming that the records at 43 your office were flooded? >> CHRISTY: Actually we had no hard records left. The case files were gone. What we had was, we have a data program and I can't do a commercial I guess for our data program but the one that we use we were able to send electronically sends our data to them when ever we wanted to so we encouraged our staff to do that. We no longer had those hard case records, the consumer files left that we could get to, but I could access it electronically. >> CALLER: All your sites there in Mississippi could access your filed electronically. >> CHRISTY: I could because all I had to do was contact the data company that we use and they have all my staff data because we send it to them on a regular basis. That's part of my policies and procedures that electronically send their data to the data storage company on a regular basis. So I could contact them and they said we have it and essentially they were able to E-mail it to me in Jackson and walk me through how to download it, which was not easy. It was pretty complicated but they were able to walk me through it on the phone and then I could access the data electronically. Then I had addresses, names as well as disabilities, which is important. The other thing, too I will say is we have several Medicaid waiver programs and two are managed by rehab services. So we have a lot of shared consumers. So the department of rehab service made a point that since they were able to be on the coast 44 and had better resources than we did as far as trucks and the capability of getting around down there, they actually, physically went house by house to the people who were on the waiver program. We knew if they were on the community waiver program we knew they were dependence on a personal care tenant. They went house to house making sure they were okay or had evacuated. >> CALLER: The ones that relocated did they hook up with other centers. Did they followup on anything? >> CHRISTY: I don't think they have followed up. I don't think a lots of our staff has relocated. We doubled our case load for a while so all of our consumers, I think, stayed in Mississippi. They relocated to other parts of the state. So we have a good bit of shared data between our offices so that was easy. So we didn't have a lot of consumers that relocated and didn't come back. We lost a few, we know. We lost a few from nursing homes. >> CALLER: Thank you. >> OPERATOR: If there are any furthered questions, please press 01 on your telephone key pad. Any questions from the web at this time? >> TIM: There are not. We have time for one more quick question from the telephone. >> OPERATOR: No other questions right now. >> RICHARD: This is Richard Petty and I would like to go back to 45 an earlier question. We had a question about how you get to the table with transportation officials to plan for emergency evacuations. And I thought I would add a couple points. Each municipality or local government whether or not it's a county or city, will have an emergency planning official. Find that official. If you have trouble finding the official go to the office of the mayor or county commissioner or an official in charge. Find that person through that mechanism and get into communication with them. If you find those communications are rocky, use the elected officials as leverage. You will have not only mayors but city boards and councils and county commissions and those are often ways of applying leverage through your local representative. But there are a whole host of ways to begin to apply more leverage. All of that is advocacy 101 for centers. Because that question was asked I wanted to give more detail on what you can do. >> TIM: Thank you, Richard. That does conclude Part Two on emergency preparedness for this week. I want to make clear again that we will remain available to answer any questions that may come up. If you process the information from both of our calls and as you review the materials and the resources and links that we provided. So please, don't hesitate at all to contact me at 46 tim@ncil.org and I will answer your question directly or pass it along to one of our presenters. I also want to encourage you after the call and it literally takes a minute or two to fill out the evaluation form to let us know what you think about the presentation. And it's Part Two of the of the emergency preparedness. Of course, I want to extend a thank you to Jeff, Christy and Richard in their hard work in preparing today's calls, materials and presentations. So thanks, everyone.