Disability and disaster preparedness
Honestly, BFF Jess for the win with this one.
Welcome to Solicited Advice, our weekly column that celebrates the helpfulness in health. Because in a world where strangers at the grocery store love to tell you that a specific brand of magnesium will indeed “cure” what ails you (it probably won’t, so sorry), we’re all about passing on our lived experience in a way that makes your life a little better. Are we experts? Nah, not really. But we’re great listeners who have perfected the art of pillow screaming. Let’s get into it!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about disaster preparedness, and how society and general best practices don’t even take disabled people into consideration. Where do I start?
Ash: While I may have an award in my household for being the more anxious human, preparedness like this is what my partner takes the trophy for. To be extraordinarily honest, he’s got the plan and I am along for the ride. Woah, this doesn’t sound like a typical Ash response, does it? You’re right. Because I have a partner whose thoughts, feelings, and priorities align with mine, I know he has a plan and I can conserve my energy for other important matters that allow us to divide and conquer in supporting each other and ourselves. Let’s turn to the other BFFs who may be able to give you something a bit more tangible than a partner who's got it in the bag. 😂
Kat: This week’s soapbox: I would really freaking love it if our society thought of disabled people as whole individuals. No one will be able to convince me otherwise, because if we did, we’d actually include disabled folks in things like city planning and NGOs, in addition to government agencies like FEMA, NOAA, DHS, etc. in order to circumvent so many avoidable missteps and careless fatalities. Even when we put aside the “politics” of school shootings (I threw up in my mouth just now), I’d really love to hear about how lockdown, evacuation, and legitimate practice drills are specifically planned for folks with all ranges of mobility and physical/emotional/intellectual disabilities. Disabled! People! Aren’t! Expendable! Thanks!
But back to the topic at hand… I’m admittedly in the same camp as Ash. We love prepper partners! (I couldn’t be more thankful for him, honestly, as possible emergencies of any flavor tend to send my anxiety into overdrive and I freeze when thinking about monumental “what ifs.”)
Obi-Wan, Jess, you’re our only hope on this one.
Jess: 😂 I’ve always had a bit of a prepping streak, but after we lost our home in a storm in 2011, our little family started prepping more intentionally. Not like doomsday preppers — if it comes down to a doomsday-type event, I’m probably screwed within a year. I wear contacts that I likely wouldn’t be able to replace once my boxes run out, glasses can trigger migraine attacks, and also *waves around* my general health.
Instead, we do what’s often referred to as “prepping for Tuesday” where Tuesday is those life things that can and do pop up and bite you in the ass. Like the flat tire that derails your day (week, month…) or the forgotten bill that has a domino effect on your budget, or the bout of stomach flu that takes out the whole house for a week. This concept of prepping for Tuesday was also really helpful when we moved to the coast and started living with hurricane season.
When our late dog was a puppy and she accidentally bit my cheek while playing, it wasn’t an emergency — we patched it up at home (and then reassured the goodest girl she wasn’t in trouble and we knew she didn’t mean to). When COVID started, we weren’t out of toilet paper, we didn’t have to run to the grocery store, and we already had N95 masks (enough that we were able to donate a bunch). When the power went out the other night, it was no big deal — we have flashlights on our phones, keep mini battery-powered lanterns in the primary rooms, and keep up with clutter so we’re not tripping over a bunch of stuff (whether the power’s on or not).
If you spend much time on the internet (hi, me too!), it can be really easy to rabbit hole in forums and on websites designed to instill fear in you so that you will buy their thing and, presumably, not be scared. Don’t do that.
If I were starting today, this is what I would do:
Remember your preparedness will never be perfect. You will never “get it right” and be perfectly prepared for anything and everything. Trying to achieve perfection will likely send you into analysis paralysis or a despair spiral. The idea of perfection is an illusion and a lie. Every small action is more prepared than if you hadn’t done anything. Hold on to that.
Don’t start panic buying shit. This rarely goes well, especially for beginners, but mostly because when we are in a panicked state, we aren’t being logical. That’s how you end up with five pounds of strawberries and no canned food. (Or a toilet paper shortage during a respiratory virus pandemic…)
Before you do anything else, ask yourself: What are you preparing for? This is part of threat modeling. If you live on the coast and hurricane season is about to start, you are most likely prepping for hurricane season. Focus on that. If, for example, you live in an increasingly fascist country and there’s so much chaos you have no idea what you’re prepping for — pick one thing, focus on it, rinse, repeat. You can’t do it all at once.
Once you know what you’re preparing for, you can start figuring out what that looks like for you. Using that same hurricane season example, you might want to start by pulling up the FEMA Hurricane Prep list and comparing it against what you already own and your personal situation. If you need your meds to stay at a certain cold temperature, your needs are going to be different from someone who doesn’t. Think through your daily routine and all of the small things you do or use, and what they are dependent on (power, water, etc). You might also want to think back on past situations where those “Tuesday” events have cropped up and caused a problem — what could have gone better? What could have prevented it from being so bad? What resources or support did you need? Once you’ve evaluated, you can make a list of what you still need to do or have, and tackle that list one at a time.
Speaking of lists: Get comfortable with lists, monitoring inventory, and FIFO (First In, First Out). If you’ve ever worked in food service or a grocery store, you’re probably already familiar with these. You don’t need much for this — an old notebook and pen or a doc on your computer (with a backup in the cloud) will do the trick. Lists are how you’re going to keep track of what you need to do so you aren’t panicking. Inventory is how you’re going to know what you already have and what you need. FIFO is how you are going to rotate that inventory. Basically, it means the oldest thing (first in) is the first thing you finish/use (first out). This is especially important with food or anything that has an expiration date, because you want to eat or use the stuff that is expiring before you eat or use the stuff that has two more years on it. The simplest way I’ve found to keep up with this is to make it part of the regular routine. So let’s say I buy a can of black beans at the store — which I do, pretty much every trip, because we love black beans, and I try to stick to a “use one, replace one” routine. When I bring it home, I pull any cans of black beans I already have out of the cabinet, review the expiration dates, and put them all back in the cabinet so the one with the longest remaining shelf life is in the back, and the ones expiring soonest are the next ones I will pull out.
Once you have a good idea of the above items, then it might be a good idea to poke around in some forums (r/twoxpreppers is less doomsday and more realistic than r/preppers, by the way) or watch some videos. The goal here is not to replicate what other people are doing or spiral at how much there is to do, but to find where your plans have gaps. This is a thought experiment, not a “follow their method” thing.
Two final thoughts:
Two is one, and one is none. Why? Because things break, go bad, and get lost — aka Tuesday happens. Having a backup goes a long way.
Don’t buy more than you can reasonably use. Things will go bad, get lost, and generally not be useful if you’re sifting through mountains of items or can’t find what you need.
We hope this was helpful! Let us know your preparedness tips in the comments!
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