Utterly essential, totally necessary, frequently neglected Disaster Education program

Our community insists on continuously learning the hard way that our communities are at risk of catastrophic failure of support systems. 

The Puget Sound region has already experienced mega-thrust earthquakes, tsunami/seiche (though the last of these occurred before anyone was taking written notes, which implies the next one could be within our lifetime), volcano, terrorism, civil unrest, large scale transportation disruptions, severe winter storms, utility infrastructure failure, landslides, flooding.  We have the potential of levee failure, dam breaks, nuclear incidents–you name it, Washington State is Disaster-rama.

 

The resilience of a community is dependent on what percentage of the community face long term effects to their lives because of unplanned disruptions, as well as what percentage of organizations are able to continue operations.  Studies have shown that there is an increased risk of long term problems due to trauma if an individuals:

• Feel that self or loved one was in mortal danger
• Low coping skills
• Feeling no where to turn for help, no one offered
• Forced Relocation
•    Loss of economic security

Disaster education fills that space between disaster planning and the individual’s perspective. The best way to avoid trauma is to avoid being traumatized, we provide information to show individuals can keep from being traumatized. 

When you have made your home safe and are aware of risks and the warnings you have less chance of experiencing mortal danger.

When you have made plans to ensure that those you care for are OK and you have ways to communicate, you have less chance of fearing for your loved one. 

When you know how to find emergency help and what to expect, you are less likely to feel there was no where to turn to. 

Workplace preparedness shows small businesses how they can radically improve their options by taking steps to maintain access to data.  More companies able to stay open reduces the number of people who face loss of economic security. 

Emergency Management and mitigation plays a key role in improving a community’s resilience during disasters and speed of recovery after the disaster, but isn’t enough to ensure individual resilience.  Structural and systematic mitigation is essential and definitely saves lives, but past experience shows that insufficient knowledge of individuals about the risks and resources available during disasters large and small will continue to lead to deaths and mass suffering regardless of the quality of mitigation and government planning.  For that, you need good, high quality disaster education.  Good education can:

Ensure individuals maintain access to life saving supplies and services:  It is important that the population has the ability to access water food warmth and medical needs in the event of abrupt disruption of supply.  Deaths result when individuals can not access these critical needs, whether lost in a winter storm or from a large regional disaster.

Make sure that the people facing direct risks understand what what community resources will and won’t available: The population needs to understand what disasters are possible and the importance of being aware of the weather and what options may available to remove themselves from harm.  A community can have disaster plans and shelter opens, but if individuals do not know how to access them they may as well not exist.

Manage Expectations:  The population needs to know that it is the very nature of life on this planet means that there will be disasters, and when they happen people can expect feeling that things are chaotic and they need to be flexible, self sufficient and resourceful. Situations are only considered disasters because infrastructure and services are disrupted due to the event, anger at the disruption is natural, but frustrating.  Good quality education openly addresses the need to plan for the psychological affects of disruption, and to build coping measures into personal planning.

If you have the opportunity to influence a disaster education program here are some recommendations:

We have limited time and resources, so go X-treme. 

Whenever possible, work to determine what groups face the highest risk levels during the disaster and help them, and then work to reach everyone else from there. There are a lot of groups that really are interested in learning about disaster preparedness, but are held back from communication problems, or incorrect assumptions about the affordability or difficulty of preparing. 

Work to locate and craft your program for members of the community who we have determined are more at risk of facing serious negative consequences from disasters.  Work to establish long term relationships so that you don’t simply give a single hour long presentation and hope they call us in a year, but to work with community leaders to determine what the most effective way to bring about changes in behavior within their community to be. Also, work to recruit volunteers from within these groups to help you reflect the communities we serve so that you can serve them better.

If you are good at reaching out to others, get grabby!  Teach as many people as you can how you do it.  Teach other organizations, teach interested individuals.  There are simply too many people for one organization to persuade, we need as many voices out talking about why disaster preparedness is important, and showing that it is easy and beneficial.

Work with human nature, not against it

Throw out the pictures in your presentations and materials of horrific things that happen.  There are people who do respond to pictures like that to prepare—and those people have already prepared, quite a number have worked hard to get others prepared as well.  Those pictures are a large part of why the other people aren’t preparing.  If someone takes no steps to plan for disasters it is a good sign that they are avoiding the subject, which is a natural reaction for individuals who have undergone previously traumatic experiences.  Our goal needs to be to present specific risks that individuals face, and provide guidance on ways to reduce the risks.  This can be done without showing disturbing pictures. 

It’s Heavy Man, Lighten Up 

Recognize the weighty nature of the information that you are providing and add as much balance as you can to keep things positive.  Disasters are simply part of life, in the Puget Sound area the earthquakes, volcanoes and flooding directly contribute to why it is so beautiful there, you can’t have one without the other.  The good news is the choices we make can radically influence our outcomes in disasters—we can each make choices that decrease the likelihood of being hurt by all of the disasters.

On ‘Closing Schools’ and Animal Wiring

I was asked if I felt the closing of schools was rash.

In situations like this week, when the perception is that there is a dangerous bug going around, it is logical to switch to situations where you can take easy steps to reduce risks when you can. The far better thing to do than closing the schools is to switch to distance learning until the bug plays itself out–they can’t though since too few people thought it through before –which is the EXACT same thing for all disaster preparedness, there are ways to reduce each and every risk-usually to the point of them not being a risk anymore, usually by doing things that are not that difficult. I have been thinking about the reasons why it is so hard for us as humans to do.

Human behavior has 3 instincts that intersect. 1. if we think we see danger, our systems kind of shut down and we stay focused on it–imagine a horse in a field that thinks it sees something, or a deer. We are the same way–we can’t turn away from the train wreck. (which helps explain why it has been so effective for news to use that ‘hint of a threat’ to encourage 24 hour veiwing.
2. We subconsciously avoid/distrust things we think might be threat-I avoid the dentist since I know it has the direct threat of pain–this despite realizing that there is more future pain caused by my actions–I know that on a rational level, but in this case my subconscious takes the reigns and I have to really force myself to do the logical thing and go in.
3. We have a hard time objectively thinking about future risks. Studies have demonstrated again and again that we can have a very clear assessment of how poorly our odds are, but still, inside, feel that we’ll be OK, that it won’t be so bad, that it won’t happen to me. I think it exists because of the other two–once we sense a risk we go into ‘irrational mode’ and start avoiding them–think of the level of vulnerability you are feeling right now–have you very well may have found yourself thinking in the last week: ‘does that person look sick?’ ‘Maybe I shouldn’t go out’. We face risks each and every day–crossing the street is a risk, eating is a risk–imagine if we focused on it, and had our ‘obsessively focus and avoid’ instincts triggered–it is impossible to live that way.

I think it is important to notice that our systems prioritize functioning and getting on with your lives as more important than constant risk assessment and avoidance–it’s because the fear of risks and the way we respond do us more harm than the actual threats that exist in the world.

Lucky for us, that we are humans, and we are able to actually over-rule the irrational and illogical impulses we have to try to move away from sub-conscious inclinations to view things objectively. We will all live better if we all teach ourselves to objectively assess what risks exist in our environment and find ways to sustainably avoid them–and almost each and every time, the answer to that is finding ways to just step out of their way.

I say sustainably avoid them–our ego & pride (more instincts) lead us into thinking that we can change the world to irradicate the danger, usually by adopting some project that is going to require fundign and focus for hundreds of years to stay safe–funding and focus that will be gone probably within a single generation–so, we end up changing the world in a way that we set up a greater danger than we avoided. Building our communities and lives in a way that identifies real risks and simply builds somewhere else, or lives somewhere else is so much smarter than just doing anything, any way and trying to alter the geological/hydrological/atmospheric processes to fit what we want to do. (The natural processes of our planet have been doing what they want to do as long as the planet has been here, call be crazy, but I don’t think they even know we are here, much less show any willingness to stop doing them simply because we don’t want them to.)

Find risks, get out of the way=fewer bad things happening.

Recognize that losing access to critical resources–food, water, body heat, Medical Equipment/Prescription/your support network–that is a big huge gigantic verified risk in our lives, and one that is very very easy to make go away–back up supply of water, food, emergency blanket, keeping your prescription information and pharmacy phone number with you–and of course, maybe most important of all–increase your ability to be able to communicate and check status on the people, animals and things you love more than anything. If you don’t know how the most important things in your life are doing in a period of disruption, you aren’t going to be able to function.

There is a real, verifiable risk from illness that exists in our lives. Our subconscious tells us to either focus & start to fear, or to completely reject it and insist that avoiding all thoughts, thus avoiding all simple ways to reduce the liklihood of it happening, which increases the liklihood of it happening. More bad things happen=more bad things in your life.

Currently there is a real and verifiable risk from a new bug–every single year we face risks from viruses–we can save lives by reducing the transmission of these viruses, but we can only do so in a way that doesn’t cause more harm to our culture, if we can work together to allow us to institute the ability to work from alternate locations, flexible hours, distance learning–let us function in periods where travelling or working is dangerous. And of course, keep getting into the habits that really help–and teaching them as life skills: wash hands well, keep surfaces clean, stop chewing nails and rubbing eyes, decrease the liklihood of being coughed or sneezed upon by adding a bit extra space to your comfort zone.

Feelings about this flu and how to stay well

This disease outbreak is playing itself out so far as a milder version of the seasonal flu, so if the seasonal flu doesn’t provoke a high level of fear each year, than you should either decide that you will change your attitude to it, or put this one in perspective.

I’m so relieved that as a culture we don’t all notice that 36,000 people per year die related to seasonal flu, we’d be feeling like this every single flu season. That’s how things got to progress in Mexico so long without their authorities noticing, they average 700 flu deaths every single December, and 300 every April–how do you notice that a different flu is also leading to flu deaths? You will notice their deaths from flu is still lower than the average April mortality, so maybe the Swine flu is slowing things down in some way.

My worry is the impact of fear on the population, we are already in a spike of xenophobia, add that ‘and the people we don’t like might be harbingers of death’ and there is a real and true risk things can get really ugly. During the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak there was similar panic, when it passed, it turns out that the US had a single fatality from the flu, but 500 people got a paralyzing nerve disease  with 30 fatalities linked to a flaw in the vaccine–how we respond to one fear very frequently sets into motion events that do so much greater harm than the original fear.

Look to the Emergency Medical Services of our country as a reminder that it is possible to work, interact, and maintain your compassion and humanity while working very closely with people who can get you sick. What are tricks we can use–reduce the likelihood that you are going to catch something, that’s pretty easy–in the US we already prefer about 4 feet of personal space around us, they say 6 feet of space can keep you from catching an airborne virus-that’s not so hard to acheive. Where do people get in clusters? Waiting in line, during rush hour on mass transit, in waiting rooms–find ways to decrease having to do all of those.

• Do your shopping and travelling at non peak times–talk to you boss about having a little flexibility in when you start and stop work, that can make this possible (and it is considered a best practice for companies irregardless of how great it is for staying healthy)
• Call your doctor and find out if there is going to be a delay for your appointment, get in when it’s pretty much time for them to call you in.
• The wonders of the modern age mean that you can get a lot of your shopping delivered to your home–try it, a lot of the delivery services are from local producers so you could end up with higher quality food that is better for you, and also supports your local farmers (or not, both options are available on line)
• Having disaster supplies and the ability to work from locations other than a central spot can mean that if it really looks like there may be a spike, or you worry about someone with compromised health, you can hang out with your family till it is passes. Having a good internet based social network will help you feel connected in that bit when you are isolated–you only want physical isolation, social isolation can lead to longer term problems.

You want to avoid being sick by things–things like the germs your hands pick up, so that means reminding yourself to frequently wash your hands–and also, stop chewing your nails-stop chewing that pencil–if you find yourself touching your mouth, rubbing your eyes–find ways to overcome your bad habits now. You’ll benefit from that too, better looking nails, if nothing else! Keep the surfaces and equipment that a lot of people come into contact clean–wipe down counters, phones, door knobs–lucky you, your spaces will look great and everyone will envy you.

You also want to help everyone get in the habit of not sharing their germs–that means recognizing that the habits that will keep you safe from gettng sick from viruses in general are life skills–teach them early and often to your kids, adopt them into your life–work with your workplaces to make it possible to not have to go in to the office if you don’t feel well–right now, no matter what we say, we still feel like it is a noble thing to keep working through colds, keep going through sickness.  Let’s keep working through colds–from home! 

Adopt policies and procedures in your work and life, that make it possible to keep functioning from different locations–kids can learn from school or a library, caregivers can work from where their object of care is.  This will have economic and safety benefits as well, since we will be able to be productive without having to drive on icy roads, learn whether the school can stay open or not.  Poor next generation kids, no such thing as snow days.  There are very few industries that can’t find ways to improve their ability to increase flexibility on who works where.  Some fast food chains are already having the orders taken by someone far from the restaurant.  Think of just how many retail stores exist already where they never actually come in direct contact the general public–Amazon, netflix.  Think of the stores that have gained from making their workplace a hybrid: Blockbuster.  These companies didn’t adopt these policies thinking about safety and health, that is just an added bonus.

The biggest risk from this situation may well be the influence of the worry, both in your self and others. It is hard to function well when you are under stress, and pretty much all of us are under stress right now, so adding this vague feeling of danger can easily push us towards physical reactions–feeling headaches, sore–from clenching our muscles all the time–that, of course, leads to thoughts that maybe we are getting sick, which leads to more anxiety. It is easy to start changing the way you do your life, how you think about other people–trust me, these changes won’t end up helping you live a better life, instead they really risk reducing your long term health and happiness. Take some time to actually think about how you respond to stress, remember times in your life when you experienced a stressful period, but ended up feeling OK if not better at the end of it. Remind yourself that during the Spanish flu 98% of the population that got sick recovered–and that was with far worse technology than we have now. So: Not that difficult to reduce your chances of getting sick enough that you can do it, and remember that if you get sick, the most likely outcome will be that you wll feel sick, then you will feel better.

Reducing harm from disaster

There are three big ways a disaster can hurt us: 

1. It can physically hurt us or people we love
2. It can keep us from getting access to things we need to be healthy and happy
3. It can cause long term unhappiness and distress  

The disaster preparedness steps: “Make a Plan”, “Build a kit”, “Get Involved”  show how to reduce the likelihood of any of the three happening in your life.  By going through the process of planning for disasters we learn what our direct risks are so that we can avoid or reduce them.  All it takes to keep from being physically hurt by a disaster is to work to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This sounds simplistic, but it is possible

• We understand, so we can teach, what processes can lead to disasters, so we know how to reduce the likelihood of them happening, or how to get out of the way if they do.
• We know what areas of town and what type buildings are most affected by different types of disasters. We know, so we can teach it.
• We know how people get hurt in various scenarios, and that it takes pretty simple changes to reduce the chances of being hurt-so we can teach it!  

 Make a plan-assessing your risks and reducing them, and you have radically diffused the likelihood of you or your loved ones being hurt by a disaster. 

In periods of extreme disruption you or your household can be harmed because you can’t reach something important to your health and happiness—that can be medicine, water, food—but of course, it can also mean each other—if you don’t know how the people, animals and things that are important to you are doing you are going to be very stressed out until you do.  Building a kit by fathering supplies and information diffuses this risk too. 

Last we know that people can experience long term trauma which can greatly hinder their ability to stay healthy and built strong relationships potentially for the rest of their lives, since trauma can have a cascading affect.  The steps of Make a Plan and Build a Kit can do a lot to reduce the likelihood of being traumatized, but by getting involved, reaching out and teaching others, reaching out and making sure our businesses and whole community has the ability to be resilient and bounce back quickly—this again, can be the key to making sure we all handle the disasters and emergencies that we will be encountering together.

If you could see the future and knew someone was going to be hurt, would you act?

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster , but we can see the future.  We have enough data from past disasters  to determine what groups are going to face the greatest harm from the disasters in our future. 

This article was taken from my wiki: www.resilient2disaster.com. It has a section providing information to help professionals in Emergency Mangement build resilience.  One of the most important steps is to help people change their future by reaching out and showing how it can take just a few steps to diffuse the risks they face.

1. Analyze what groups in your community face the highest risks from disaster.
We know from past disasters that this group will always include:

• Difficulty getting warning about a danger: Language, limitations hearing, difficulties remembering or understanding, overwhelmed by outside factors, voluntarily isolated.
• Difficulty getting away from or reducing danger: severely limited resources, restricted mobility, difficulties understanding, unaware: overwhelmed, or not warned
• Difficulty getting help: barrier to communication, restricted mobility, afraid to ask for help, obstinant, ie won’t ask for help.
• Living in direct threat of a hazard

Sources of information:

Integrated Hazard and Census Map: FEMA Hazard Mapping https://hazards.fema.gov/femaportal/wps/portal/mmvmapviewer (information from 2002, to see hazard and census assessment, choose region and click on the area interested after selecting the information tool (an i in a circle))

2000 Census Maps and info: http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

MLA Language Map: http://www.mla.org/map_single

Assess Now: Washington State Public Health Tools to create data based community assessments: http://www.assessnow.info/
Puget Sound Regional Council: King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish Census characteristics: http://www.psrc.org/data/census/sf3/index.htm

Washington State Demographic Profiles from the Office of Financial Management: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/census2000/profiles/

Statistics and Sources for Professionals about individuals with functional limitations affecting their sight: http://www.afb.org/section.asp?SectionID=15&DocumentID=1367#prev

Private site that combines vast sources of publicly available data to provide tables and description of communities: http://www.city-data.com/city/Washington.html

Redfin Community Assessments

2. Find ways to communicate effectively now

Widen your perspectives:
Increase your understanding of cultural competency and disability etiquette

An ADA Guide for local governments: Making Community Emergency Preparedness and Response Programs Accessible to People with Disabilities http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/emergencyprepguide.htm

ADA Toolkit: http://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/toolkitmain.htm

There are multiple ways to overcome communication problems, many require advance planning.

Assess your resources! Do people you work with have personal experience and perspectives on some of the challenges facing the community. You probably work with individuals who are care givers, have overcome or are undergoing challenges, have disabilities, speak multiple languages at home. This can help improve your ability to create programs and services that make sense to a wider group of people. If you find you don’t–work to fix that–it is almost impossible to serve the population effectively if you don’t reflect the population. It can lead to group think and placing too much focus on systems and things over people.

3. Reach out and listen to others.

Public Safety organizations have the reputation of not speaking the same language as the general population, and in particular, of the population groups that face the highest risks during disasters. The best way to counter this is to not speak at all–but to listen. Create opportunities that promote dialogue between your office and individuals and groups from multiple perspectives in the community.

From ADA: Planning Ahead to Provide Effective Communication

Even before someone requests an auxiliary aid or service from your public entity, plan ahead to accommodate the communication needs of persons with disabilities. Prepare for the time when someone will request a qualified interpreter, Braille documents, video relay, or another auxiliary aid or service.

Identify local resources for auxiliary aids and services. Even if you do not think there is anyone with a disability in your community, you need to be prepared.

Find out how you can produce documents in Braille or acquire other aids or services. Technology is changing, and much of the equipment needed to ensure effective communication is less expensive than it once was. Consider whether it makes sense to procure equipment or obtain services through vendors. If your needs will be best met by using vendors, identify vendors who can provide the aids or services and get information about how much advance notice the vendors will need to produce documents or provide services.

Contract with qualified interpreter services and other providers so that interpreters and other aids and services will be available on short notice. This is especially critical for time-sensitive situations, such as when a qualified interpreter is necessary to communicate with someone who is arrested, injured, hospitalized, or involved in some other emergency.

Use this checklist to assess your agency’s ability to provide effective communication and to figure out the next steps for achieving ADA compliance.

Train employees about effective communication and how to obtain and use auxiliary aids and services. All employees who interact with the public over the telephone or in person need to know their role in ensuring effective communication.

4. Work to make connections with individuals and their support network
Work with Service Providers, Community Based Organization, Support Groups–encourage them to work together to plan for how to communicate during a disaster, and how to determine who needs help and how to get it.
Locate Communicators that fully understand the perspective and culture of the groups you need to reach.
Work with Community Based Organizations, recruit volunteers.
Resources:
How to find CBOs:
Private site: Registry of tax exempt organizations by zip code: http://www.taxexemptworld.com/search.asp?type=oz

5. Make Sure you actively work to include people with disabilities and other challenges into your emergency planning

credit crisis is a real disater

Earlier I wrote about the direct link between the aspects of human behavior that make it easy for people to buy more than they could afford and the aspects of human behavior that inclines people to ignore specific risks of disasters. 

In today’s NYTimes there is an article by Paul Krugman that really brought home just how closely the current economic situation parallels a large disaster.  Tell me if this sound familiar?:

“There was a lot of soul-searching going on. One senior policy maker asked, “Why didn’t we see this coming?…Some people say that the current crisis is unprecedented, but the truth is that there were plenty of precedents, some of them of very recent vintage…Why did so many observers dismiss the obvious signs “

Out of context they could have been talking about the aftermath of any large storm, flood, any time a piece of infrastructure fails and causes harm.

There is important parallel that we need not to miss, though.  Disasters are traumatic, and trauma is dangerous. 

In large disasters 43% or more individuals can show signs of trauma which increases the negative effects of the initial disaster exponentially. This is recognized by the American Red Cross which mobilizes hundreds of Disaster Mental Health workers to a disaster affected region from the first moments that the disaster has taken place.

Disaster Mental Health Professionals study the causes of trauma.  A person is more likely to show signs of trauma if they have undergone an experience in which the person feels that they, or a loved one was in mortal danger; needing help and feeling that no one reached out to assist; loss of income; forced relocation, or if the person has already been traumatized.   

Thankfully, the economic crisis isn’t playing out in a way that a considerable number of people feel that they are in direct mortal peril—but there are definitely a considerable number of people who are experiencing loss of income, forced relocation, lack of social support. 

Our bodies and minds respond to traumatic experiences in consistent ways, intense experiences lead to intense emotions, depression, and health effects. Some of the follow on effects of undergoing can be an increase in risky behaviors, addiction related problems from attempting to “self medicate” away from the feelings, the physiological effects can impact attendance and the ability to find employment, emotional changes can push loved ones away, individuals can lose their trust in society.   

Losing ones job and or ones house may  not seem like a dramatic event like an emergency, but it reminds me of how I felt in the weeks after September 11.  

We were living in Alexandria, VA on the outskirts of Washington DC.  We were close enough that our house shook when the plane hit the Pentagon.  I followed pretty consistent behaviors for a stressful situation, my first instinct was to get in contact with the people most important to me.  I tried and tried, but couldn’t reach my husband who was half a mile away, all of the phones were overloaded (now I know what I should have done). 

I didn’t directly experience the attack, no one I knew was hurt in it, yet a month later I was in a doctor’s office explaining that my stomach constantly hurt, It felt hard to breath and I was having heart palpitations.  Individuals do not need to be directly harmed to be hurt by an experience. 

In number terms the economic crisis has the potential of directly and indirectly impacting more people than any disaster that has been experienced.

There is a lot of focus on providing help for the companies affected, and a lot of discussion about the need to create programs to help home owners, and looking for new jobs, but I haven’t seen any talk about the likely psychological responses we can expect to see, and any talk at all about programs to provide intervention and support to help people avoid making decisions that will hold them back, that will hold all of us back, for decades to come.

frustration and joy in the life of a professional safety guru

I am one of the luckiest people around.  I get paid to do a job that I would (and did) do voluntarily.  I get paid to change the future.  My job is to work to get people to make tiny little changes in the decisions they make.  Little decisions that can mean the difference between experiencing great horror or great adventure as the world and the laws of physics do what they do.

I am a disaster educator, a ’subject matter expert on emergency preparedness’ with the American Red Cross in Seattle.  I am quite lucky to have that position, there aren’t many in the country, and there are a lot of very talented people that I work and interacti with in the field.   On Thanksgiving I spent a lot of time thinking about just how lucky I have been.  Of course, it is natural for people to feel lucky during stable periods of their life.  That is distinctly unlucky for the disaster educator, the fact people are inclined to feel lucky makes our job so much harder.

The only thing certain in life is death, taxes and natural disasters, but people have only internalized the ‘death and taxes’ part, the majority of people are still in denial about disasters. This isn’t surprising.  We are naturally inclined to expect the future is going to be OK, wouldn’t it be worse if we weren’t.  This inclination is used by salespeople with great effect–somewhere deep down inside we know that our 7 year ARM mortgage loans won’t be affordable  after the 7 years, but we buy the house anyway sure that something will work out by then.  We can’t really afford the payments of our TV that will be starting in a year, after we put zero down–but a year is a long way away-something will work out.  The credit lenders deep down inside knew that there would come the day when all of the payments came due at the same time–but they were sure that when it did, surely it wouldn’t be so bad. 

One of the biggest difficulties in working to build resilience in a community through education is avoiding the urge to spend all the time talking with people who are already on board and counting that as success.  In my experience, 90% of the people who reach out and request education already have done most of the work of getting ready.  They already get it, being aware of the resources available to them, like free classes, is part of that process.  The people who need the most help are the ones least interested in hearing about it.

We avoid thinking about disasters, but we do seek out others, crave and create connections,  seek information.   Connection, communication, searching out information–these are all critical for resilience. 

Human nature puts barriers in the path of all of the safety gurus out there, but it also creates paths for those willing to look.