Disaster Planning

Receiv­ing this email from our church isn’t giv­ing me warm fuzzies. Thank­ful­ly, it does say “for what we think is an unlike­ly possibility.”

Geor­gia Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency has rec­om­mend­ed for schools that they keep on hand enough food and water for 24 hours. This rec­om­men­da­tion pre­sumes that imme­di­ate­ly after a dis­as­ter roads may be impas­si­ble for a peri­od of time.

At (church) we have con­sid­ered a worst-case sce­nario of dis­as­ter strik­ing on Sun­day morn­ing dur­ing ser­vices. We have no place to store food and water for 450 peo­ple for what we think is an unlike­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty. So we are rec­om­mend­ing that peo­ple store a sup­ply in their cars. Such a portable stash would give peo­ple addi­tion­al cov­er­age for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being stuck in traf­fic in a mass evac­u­a­tion or just in reg­u­lar Atlanta traffic. 

Of course, we hope that such mea­sures are nev­er need­ed, but a tem­po­rary sup­ply of food and water seems a rea­son­able precaution.