Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Disaster or emergency preparedness

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 11/13/02 6:41 PM, "Joani Blank" <joani [at] swansway.com> wrote:

> Has your built community done any disaster preparedness, such as laying in
> of emergency food, water and supplies, providing yourselves with any level
> of classes or training, or any making any other formal preparations.  Do
> you keep a list of emergency contacts for all residents, and do you have an
> evacuation plan in the event of a fire., flood tornado or earthquake?

We have a fire evacuation plan and a member who conducts fire drills. He is
really into this and the children and parents of children appreciate it a
lot. Our layout makes it fairly easy to see exits from any location inside
the buildings. We also have built in sprinkler systems with a sprinkler
literally everywhere, even in closets.

We have (loose) plans to purchase a generator for the commonhouse so we
could have power and heat there in emergencies. We could use the gasoline in
our cars or get from the gas station on the corner.

No emergency food or water storage but since we are in an urban location
this is less important than if we were rural.

We  have an emergency contact tree set up for any communications that people
do not or cannot send via email.

Oddly many people see us as in great danger because we live in DC. One
insurance company has stopped writing homeowner insurance here (I've
forgotten which one) and other policy premiums have doubled. I actually feel
safer here than anywhere else because we have all the protection the
Whitehouse receives AND because the Pentagon was so embarrassed by the 9/11
attacks that I can't see anything else getting by them. I may be totally off
on this but there isn't much I could do about it anyway and I sleep better
believing it.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l