As many of you know I had the chance to go to Aniston Alabama to take a class called Healthcare Leadership for Mass Casualty incidents. It was sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management System, which is part of Homeland security. It was an awesome and many times overwhelming experience, but I learned a lot!
Here are a few things I learned:
Lesson #1 Our government likes to give things fancy names so there are a lot of acronyms, more than a lot, in fact our book had several pages explaining nothing but the acronyms used, it's a whole different language.
Lesson #2 I always thought I could never live where there were tornados, and since this was tornado season and there were tornados in the area the previous week, I was a little apprehensive. That is, until I got there. Everywhere you go there are signs telling you where the tornado shelters are, and the weather is predicted very specifically, up to the minute. There was an enormous thunderstorm one of the nights we were there, being nervous I turned on the tv to make sure there were no tornado watches or warnings. There weren't but what I found out was that the thunderstorms were going to stop at 1256am. not 1am, but 1256...I watched the clock and they did stop....at 1256. It was amazing, our weather people cannot even tell us if there are going to be thunderstorms, let alone the exact minute they will stop! Obviosly they have developed incredible weather tracking abilities there, so I stopped worrying about tornados. Although I do have to admit that when I was out running I was constantly looking around to determine where I could escape to if I did see signs of one.
Lesson #3 it is always important to be prepared and have a plan, but you have to know that plan, just having it on paper doesn't do much good when you are in the middle of chaos, because you can look through books, but when you are stressed it is really hard to find information, even when you know exactly where it is.
Lesson #4 When you are in an exercise and the people running the exercise don't want you to have enough ventilators, you are not going to be able to locate them, no matter what you do. How can you learn if you always have what you need when you need it? In real life you never have everything you needed right when you need it. Sometimes you need the stress of NOT being able to have or do something in order to learn how to deal with that.
Lesson #5 When going in to a stressful situation it is always good to have friends around. This week was incredibly stressful and phone service was sketchy. I had people I knew, but no true friends with me and that made what I went through much more difficult than it had to be. There were a lot of friendly people around, but there is no substitute for true friends or family. I am very blessed with a large family and a lot of supportive friends, it made me appreciate them much more, and it made me a lot more sensitive to what those that don't have that must deal with every day of their life.
Final take away. Amidst all the chaos one of the other participatns said "people think I am a b**** and I am not really like that" someone else replied "you are what others percieve you to be". It made me wonder what others perceive me to be, but then again, it is not important what "others" perceive me to be, it is only important what my Father in Heaven percieves me to be, and I want that to be good.
ps. Our command center determined this week that when you are in a disaster you need a S***load of ventilators!!!!
The Center for Domestic preparedness offers many classes to help first responders and healthcare leadership prepare for a disaster. All classes are free for people at the local level, that means all transportation, lodging food and supplies are provided, you just need to be there. If you would like more information, or to register go to cdp.gov and check it out. I highly recommend it.
This is my favorite picture of me and my dad....a long time ago. Miss you dad
