Evacuation

 

This word “evacuation” has been repeated often in the news. It certainly makes since that if a flood is coming or a fire or some wild hungry animals or a tornado or a tsunami or unpleasant folks carrying weapons that wish to cause havoc or some other natural or unnatural disaster for your survival you would get the heck out of there. The question is where would you go?

Most of us have an emergency kit in our medicine cabinet containing iodine and a few band-aids, but do you have an evacuation plan? Some have an evacuate plan for getting out of a burning house with rolled up ladders by the windows and stickers on windows to tell the first responders where the children are, but have you ever tested it?

News reports or phone alerts or social media, but who wants to leave home can foresee today’s evacuation notices. No one wants to line up with everyone in the neighborhood escaping imminent doom on an exodus to nowhere.

If you have a relative or a friend you could travel to, how long will they allow you and whatever you brought into their space? If you can find vacancy at a local bedding establishment, can you afford to stay? Are you far enough away from harm?

Evacuation indicates once the danger has passed you can go back to your home, unpack and turn on the TV. Think of it as a mini-vacation.

What happens if there is nothing to go back to? If you former domicile had burnt down or been bombed or flooded what do you do?

Still need to get out of the rain and cold and find some food. How much do you have on your credit card? School, work, child care, volunteering is all out the window because you are in an emergency survival situation.

Even if you decide to rebuild and start over, there are insurance funds to process, contractors to hire, new utilities connected and landscaping. Will your job give you time off? Will you (and or your family) sleep in the car? Can you get gas?

If everything is gone except what you could grab as you ran out the door, where are all your documentation? Who are you now? Can you prove it?

So now where do you go? You must migrate to another place as a refugee. Whatever you left behind is gone and forgotten.

If you’d been in the Twin Towers on 9/11, there was nowhere to evacuate.