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I think every person, family, group of friends, offices, neighborhoods, local, state, and federal government should have a disaster plan. Though our government may have one they have neither updated to take advantage of current communications nor fully explained it to the rest of us.
So I have decided to start taking upon myself to create an outline of what a disaster plan should be. It is likened to an interface class and a super class in programming. Meaning, there are some aspects of it that can be overridden, extended, as well as maintain certain methods of action that should be formed without dictating exactly what those methods are.
The basic idea of the plan is how the individual, family, friends, the workplace, local and federal government should work together in order to make sure that we are not all running around like a bunch of jackasses clogging the phone lines to make sure that our healthy friends and family members are ok while elderly, children, the disabled, and the injured are able to get the help that they need.

A good example would be earthquakes. When an Earthquake strikes you have about 45 seconds to make a phone call. In Southern California the time in which the phones are free is directly linked to the magnitude of the Earthquake. A 5.0 earthquake in the desert, rattles a few buildings in Burbank, you are looking at 20 to 30 minutes, a 6.8 strikes in the San Fernando Valley the phones will be down for a day or two.

When the Northridge quake hit in 1994 my older sister attending school in Ithica New York was unable to contact us in Simi Valley, however she could get a hold of my grand parents in Bakersfield. My grandparents in Bakersfield could contact us. I have long suspected this has to do with the way the telecommunication wires run in and out of the state. People from out of state would call in state to check on the their families, this would leave the narrower lines into the region clogged. It would be easier to contact someone in the state but not in the effected area. This gave the idea of points of contacts for families for two reasons. First it would diffuse the calls so all the calls are not comming in from one place. Second would several families can update one family member who then could update everyone else.

Making Sure Everyone is OK.

Scenario: I have two cousins that live in Los Gatos, an uncle that lives in San Jose, an aunt and uncle who live in Vacaville, a cousin and his family in San , another cousin and her family in Walnut Creek, and one who lives somewhere in San Fransisco. If an Earthquake hits the bay area it would be foolish of me to immediately call each family to make sure everyone is ok the moment I learned of the disaster. The area has just been hit by a disaster and there is nothing that I could, though I would be very concerned about my family members in the area the best course of action would be for me to wait until the dust settles. Coming from a large family I know that I am not the only one that would be calling my relatives. Reflecting on the 1994 quake and knowing that though our house was standing our place was ok, things were still a mess, we had been up since 4am, and by the time people could call in we really didn’t want to talk to everyone. This is why it is essential to have a point of contact for families.

Each nuclear family should have one person that communicates with everyone else their families status. This also is helpful in the even that a family member is hospitalized. During the initial moments of the disaster voice communication should be avoided. People should initially send “I’m OK” text to their family’s captain. Simple text messaging. Text messaging should be the preferred communication when disaster strikes since I can work on a que type of system. People should not spam everyone with the question “R U OK?” People should know that their mother’s and wives want to know if they are ok and send a bulk message out to only essential people. For me it would me my mother and wife. My wife can update her mother and brother on how I am doing, my mother could update my sisters. Once I hear the “I’m OK” from my mother, wife and little brother I can then send a text to my cousin saying, “We are all ok.” My cousin can then post on facebook that my family in Southern California is ok.

Using the example of my family in the bay area the communication plan would look something like this. My Uncle Bill let’s Sally know that he is ok, Sally let’s my cousin Clark and Anna that they are OK. My cousin Clark sends me a message saying that his family, father, Sally, and sister are all fine. My Uncle Chris and Aunt Donna send a message to my cousin Courtney that they are fine. Christopher does the same. Courtney posts on her facebook page that her family is ok. I would be watching Twitter and facebook closely for word from the bay. My cousin Margalo calls her parents to let them know they are ok, they let my cousin Krista know they are fine, Krista sends out an email to her relatives that they are all fine. Since my mother is not on facebook nor is she connected to her email as I am so I would phone my mother and let her know that everyone checked in and everyone is fine. She would then call my sister in Michigan who would then update her sister.

A key ingredient to this scenario is that nobody called someone to find out if they are ok. In this chain the only person that would warrant a phone call is my uncle Bill due to his weakened state. Phone calls to check up on someone should be reserved for certain individuals. There are a bunch of different scenarios to account for when deciding who should get the call and who should be calling. I would trust that someone from my uncle’s family or one of his many friends would make sure that he is ok. It is something that does not need action on my part. If I don’t hear from my cousins or uncle on the Morey side after a while, once the dust settles I can start making calls to find out if they are ok. People should also post the status of their friends on social networking sites as well. People should post status of their friends families on social networking sites as well. If one of my cousins friends have not heard anything either and since nobody in the family communication chain has heard from them I would start calling people.