Response
Your safety and well-being in an emergency depend on how prepared you are and on how you respond to a crisis. By being able to act responsibly and safely, you will be able to protect yourself, your family, others around you and your animals. Taking cover and holding tight in an earthquake, moving to the basement with your pets in a tornado, and safely leading horses away from a wildfire are examples of safe response. These actions can save lives.
Preparedness
Includes developing plans for what to do, where to go, or who to call for help before an event occurs; actions that will improve your chances of successfully dealing with an emergency. For instance, posting emergency telephone numbers, holding disaster drills, and installing smoke detectors are all preparedness measures. Other examples include identifying where you would be able to shelter your animals in a disaster. You should also consider preparing a disaster kit with essential supplies for your family and animals.
Reference some of the below links when developing your plans:
Indiana Department of Homeland Security
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Developing & Managing Emergency Operations Plan
Earthquake Preparedness
Central US Earthquake Consortium
COOP (Continuity of Operations Plans)
EDEN-Extension Disaster Education Network
Communications & Warning
Your family may not be together when disaster strikes, so plan how you will contact one another. Think about how you will communicate in different situations.
Communications are essential to any business operation. A communications failure can be a disaster in itself, cutting off vital business activities.
Communications are needed to report emergencies, to warn personnel of the danger, to keep families and off-duty employees informed about what’s happening at the facility to coordinate response actions and to keep in contact with customers and suppliers.
Emergency Communications
IPSC-Integrated Public Safety Commission
ARRL-American Radio Relay League
Mitigation
Includes any activities that prevent an emergency, reduce the likelihood of occurrence, or reduce the damaging effects of unavoidable hazards. Mitigation activities should be considered long before an emergency.
Recovery
After an emergency and once the immediate danger is over, your continued safety and well-being will depend on your ability to cope with rearranging your life and environment. During the recovery period, you must take care of yourself and your animals to prevent stress-related illnesses and excessive financial burdens. During recovery, you should also consider things to do that would lessen (mitigate) the effects of future disasters.
Report Your Damage
Disaster Assistance
Indiana Department of Homeland Security
Federal Emergency Management Agency
When disasters take place, the Individuals and Households Program (IHP) provides money and services to people in the disaster area when losses are not covered by insurance and property has been damaged or destroyed.
IHP funded by FEMA is designed to help you with critical expenses that cannot be covered in other ways.
Damage Assessment Procedures for Individual Assistance:
Situation is monitored by IDHS/EOC and has close contact with the county EOC
Once damaged areas are identified, surveyed and the results reported to IDHS, the county is contacted for a Preliminary Damage Assessment verification survey with the County and State IDHS officials.
If enough damages were found and enough damage has been verified in the state to be significant in number County, State and Federal agencies conduct a Joint Preliminary Damage Assessment.
FEMA will evaluate the information gathered and verified during the JPDA. If the verified damage and impacts warrant federal assistance the Governor sends letter to the President requesting a disaster declaration based on the JPDA findings.
Public Assistance (PA)
The Public Assistance Program provides supplemental Federal disaster grant assistance for the repair, replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and the facilities of certain Private Non-Profit (PNP) organizations. The Federal share of assistance is not less than 75% of the eligible cost for emergency measures and permanent restoration. The State determines how the non-Federal share (up to 25%) is split with the applicants.
