It's About Time Ruth Wong

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Power outage reveals gaps in readiness

How did you fare during the recent earthquakes? One thing I encourage my clients to do is to continually improve. This involves a simple evaluation -- whether it be of their day, a completed project, presentation or even a recent trip. These leads to "kaizen" (continuous improvement) in performance and results.

In this case, I encourage you to quickly evaluate how you fared during the earthquake.

To keep things simple, I've boiled the exercise down to three questions:

1. What went well -- what worked?

2. What didn't go well -- what didn't work?

3. What would you do differently next time?

My own evaluation:

1. What went well?

I was up, dressed and groomed early. I had a battery-operated radio with extra batteries. I had flashlights and a good supply of bottled water. I had a corded phone which I keep for emergencies.

2. What didn't go well?

My cell phone battery was very low, and I had no way to recharge it. My car was almost out of gas -- if I'd had to evacuate, I wouldn't have gotten far. If I'd gone to the station down the hill (which does have an emergency generator), there would probably have been a long line. I don't usually let my gas run so low, but I'm not sure I had enough gas to idle for a 20-minute wait! (Anyway, I wasn't sure how to manually open the garage door to get the car out.)

I didn't have enough good food on hand. I was all ready to cook my healthful oatmeal when the power went out, so I ended up eating a banana and cold pork and beans, which made for a lousy breakfast. I forgot I had a never-used butane stove on the closet shelf.

The answers to Question No. 2 give you the answers to No. 3:

What would you do differently next time?

In my case, I would keep my cell phone battery charged, not let the gas in my car get lower than a third of a tank, eat breakfast promptly, have more and better food on hand (especially comfort food), get my butane stove down and try it out, and learn how to manually open the garage door -- for starters.

Now, I realize my problems were minor this time, but had it been a major disaster, those minor inconveniences would have been magnified.

Amazingly, just the day before the earthquakes, a friend had given me the state Department of Health's "Plan to Be Ready!" packet. It's a most useful booklet with valuable information and data sheets to fill out. Using it, you can record vital information and create a plan to take care of yourself, family and pets during an emergency.

It walks you through step by step and makes emergency planning and preparation simple. Download a copy from www.hawaii.gov/health or call 586-4442. You can also request "Plan 9," a list of nine things to keep on hand for emergencies.

It's good to continually improve preparedness. When the next emergency occurs, you'll be glad you did!

See you in two weeks!