Emergency Preparedness

Watching the evacuations and shelters in the South got me thinking about the role we might play in disasters in our area. Grace Church has had a standing agreement with the American Red Cross of the Susquehanna Valley to use our facility for emergency response. Our facility could be a great resource in handling a large emergency in our area.

The biggest threat to our building is likely a fire. Our building is equipped with a monitored fire alarm system that uses heat sensors, smoke detectors and pull stations. Our procedures for our Monday-Friday ministries meet the daycare/school standards. We conduct monthly fire drills, each held at a different time of day and each simulating a fire in a different part of the building. The daycare standard is to have the building evacuated in under 3 minutes; we regularly clear the building in around 2 minutes.

But weekend ministries, particularly Sunday morning, are a different challenge. The biggest challenge to a fire drill on a Sunday morning is for families to resist the instinct to go get their children, but instead to evacuate the building and reunite with their kids on the soccer field. Some day I'd like to have a fire drill on a Sunday morning. It would be very different from a normal fire drill. I would announce it publicly beforehand to let everyone know it's coming. I would have as much preplanning as possible so everyone knows what they're supposed to do and where they're supposed to go. I would be secretive about it at all because there's no reason to. My goals would be to educate people on what they were supposed to do, get them familiar with our alarm system and accustomed to reuniting with family in the parking lot.

The frequent storms during the summer of 2004 gave us an opportunity to practice our tornado preparedness. We evacuated something like 3 or 4 times last summer, moving everyone in the building into Room 201.

I've attempted to improve our emergency preparedness, but haven't had as much success as I'd like, mostly because I need qualified people with enough time to help me put it together.