Cohousing-L Mailing List: Emergency preparedness

[Heather Carver (tierrabodhi]

I'm on our emergency preparedness team, so I was looking through the archives 
for any wisdom from other cohousing communities that may have experienced 
natural (or unnatural) disasters. There was a thread a few years back about a 
role for the national co-housing organization in disaster prep, but I guess it 
didn't really go anywhere.

Subduction earthquakes similar to the one last year in Japan happen in this 
area about every 300 years, and the last one was 312 years ago. So we're trying 
to get prepared. Needless to say, we're better prepared than most 
neighborhoods, simply because we all know each other, and are used to working 
together. 

We would like to establish a link with a community in another part of the 
country to be an out-of-state- contact. This is recommended for families 
because sometimes long-distance calls can get through even when local lines are 
down or restricted to emergency calls. In addition to our family out-of-state 
contacts, we thought it could be good to have one for the community. Then 
everyone who's at work or wherever could call or text our location/condition to 
the out-of-state contact, and whoever is handling communications at the 
Ecovillage could check with you for updates. And, of course, we'd do the same 
for you. 

thankyou!

Heather Carver
Columbia Ecovillage, Portland, Ore.