COVID-19 Highlights Best Emergency Preparedness Approach: Lead by Example

Abstract

For nearly 20 years, I have given presentations on family emergency preparedness. I have spoken to reporters, written articles, even co-authored a book about it. I have developed online family preparedness guides. I have worked in emergency preparedness for the public sector, private sector, and for nonprofits. Yet when an unanticipated disaster arrived, I was unprepared. Despite decades of lecturing on the subject, when COVID-19 struck earlier this year I had nothing prepared for my own family: no preparedness kit, no stock of water, no extra food. I had no plan. Like far too many Americans in the wake of disasters, I had always intended to build up a preparedness kit and emergency stock. But like the cobbler who was too busy to make shoes for his own children, I spent too much time telling others how to prepare for a disaster; not enough time preparing myself. COVID-19 continues to teach all of us painful lessons about how unprepared we are for the unexpected and what we need to do to prepare for the future. For emergency preparedness specialists like me, the pandemic underscores how important it is thatwe lead by example.Whenwe take the time to “preparewhatwe preach,” we see firsthand the challenges that all Americans face in doing so themselves and better understand how to address the challenges. We also highlight the role we play as preparedness messengers in our circle of family, friends, and neighbors. My own exposure to family preparedness started when I was a child. I saw the preparedness efforts instilleduponmymaternal grandmotherwho lived through the Great Depression. She was a young teen during the Depression and her pantry as an adult told a story of want. Like Scarlett O’Hara, she was determined to “never be hungry again.” In the face of pending hunger and poverty, she always stocked her pantry with hundreds of cans of Campbell’s Soup and bulk packages of spearmint