Transcription:

Prakash Chandran: This Ridgecrest Regional Hospital COVID-19 podcast was recorded on August 21st, 2020. On the fourth and 5th of July, 2019 two major earthquakes impacted Ridgecrest and its surrounding communities. This year COVID-19 has shifted the way we all live and address unexpected emergencies. National Preparedness Month, or NPM is recognized each September to promote family and community disaster planning now, and throughout the year. As our nation continues to respond to COVID-19, there's no better time to be involved in this September. The 2020 National Preparedness Month theme is Disasters Don't Wait, Make Your Plan Today. We're going to talk about it today with Stephanie Meeks, Emergency Management and Regulatory Compliance Manager at Ridgecrest Regional Hospital. This is the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital podcast, I'm Prakash Chandran. First of all, Stephanie, what do you believe is the most important part of making emergency plans?

Stephanie Meeks: The thing that I think is really important is just like the tagline for this year's preparedness month says, Don't Wait, start now and plan realistically. Think about what might be a risk for you for where you live. And for Ridgecrest earthquakes, we want to make sure that we are ready. So Ridgecrest has had a tough year. And so we want to make sure that we remember some of the lessons that we learned with our families, with our homes at our businesses when it came to those earthquakes, because we know that we're not done with those. We may not have big ones, but we're still going to have some events think about those things, power outages. Another thing we learned this year had to do with supply chain disruptions, plan for those things. And don't just plan, one of the most important things that we can do is to practice just like we had drills when we were in school, fire drills or quack drills for California. We want to practice at home. So have some drills with your family, have a good plan for communicating what you'll do if there's another earthquake or if there's a fire in your house, practice, practice, practice. It's so important to build some of that muscle memory to help you and your family respond really quickly when disaster does strike. So just having a good plan, communicating that plan and just practicing that plan is so important for being ready.

Host: That totally makes sense to me. And as the recommendation of being proactive, being prepared and practicing comes into place. I'm curious as to your thoughts around the most effective techniques for emergency planning.

Stephanie Meeks: Just educating yourself and putting into practice the things that you're learning. Cause we can all know in the back of our heads that we need to have a plan, but just don't wait now, get it done and get your family prepared. I think that the more knowledge we have helps us with some of the fear we might have when it comes to having those disaster strikes, when the next earthquake hits, instead of going into a stressed out mode, if you have something already in place, you have a plan, you know what you're going to do. You've safeguarded your home. You're going to feel a lot less stress, less scared when those things actually hit. So using the information that you're learning is the best technique. Get out there, get educated and do it.

Host: Yeah. And just getting into specifics for Ridgecrest. What are some of those things that people can do to prepare themselves? Like I imagine there are things around prepping their home, filling their cars with gas, getting groceries ahead of time. What are some other things that people can do to prepare for an emergency situation?

Stephanie Meeks: Some of the things that we have seen as a community work best are those who are involved. We have an amazing community, like emergency preparedness community out here. People jumped in to help, our city management team, our local cert, local ham radio operators, get involved with those people. That's a great way to educate yourself and your family is to get involved in the resources that we currently have here, the community emergency response team, I can't say enough about that team. If you want to learn about how to be prepared for your family and your neighborhood, that's the team I would get involved with because when you're involved, you're way better prepared because you're actively participating in trainings and meetings and drills. Like when the hospital has drills, we invite those volunteers to come and be a part of those drills. Now, not everybody has to look at it as being a responder. Community Emergency Response Teams are about making sure you’re prepared, your family's prepared and ready, and your neighborhood is. That way you're not taxing the emergency preparedness and the emergency response community, when things do go down, you can take care of your family. You can help your neighborhood. So we're not having to call 911 so much if we don't need it, of course, for emergencies we always want to, but those groups are huge part of our having a prepared community.

Host: Yeah. And I think that's really good advice. Just getting involved with those groups to be proactive and to really understand everything that it takes to not only prepare yourself, but to prepare your community in case something happens. So related to that, I'm curious as to how disaster management plans has helped communities in the past?

Stephanie Meeks: When we had our earthquakes boy, did everyone jump in and did such a great job. And they didn't even have to be asked. People were ready to respond, people jumped in. They help their neighbors. So many outside organizations, the local governments like Cal OES, Office of Emergency Services. They were so impressed that we didn't need a lot of assistance because we were ready. And so when you have a community that's ready, we have meetings every month. It's called the Indian Wells Valley Emergency Services Committee. And we meet every month when we are not in COVID. We meet the second Thursday of every month at 11:30 at Kerr McGee. And it's open to the community. We talk about those current issues and resources. We keep each other updated on current activities. When the hospital's having a drill, we invite people in. That's how our community stays prepared. A really well rounded group of people from the school district and the water district and search and rescue and churches come, and the radio stations, and we all know each other and we all have the ability to communicate during a disaster. It really helps when you build those relationships. So having a prepared community means we need less assistance from the outside to come in and help take care of us. We can take care of ourselves. And that's what was so amazing about Ridgecrest during the earthquakes, during COVID, we've had a lot of stuff going on, but we've been able to maintain, it's been a really great community here.

Host: Yeah, it certainly has an, you mentioned COVID and I wanted to ask you what the differences are in emergency management and planning in non-natural disaster scenarios versus what we're going through today, which is the COVID-19 pandemic, which is obviously pretty different. So maybe talk a little bit about how emergency management relates in this COVID-19 environment.

Stephanie Meeks: Oh, absolutely. One of the things about emergency management is you're looking at what's the probability of something happening? We have vulnerability assessments that we do here at the hospital to make sure that we're looking at what our risks are, when we have human made or a natural disaster typically those things hit very quickly and they leave very quickly. They end quickly. Now our recovery may not be so quick, but a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, we had hit fast, we were able to make decisions and wrap it up and be done with it. Whereas when you have an emerging infectious disease, such as COVID-19, you have a little bit more time for preparedness because you can see it coming, especially we're geographically isolated out here. I know we have a lot of travelers, but for the most part, we can see when something's headed our way. And we can have some time to prepare for that surge of patients like the hospital might have, but COVID-19 and things like that certainly last, so much longer than a natural or human made disaster. So the management of a natural disaster is very rapid, but with COVID-19 it's a much longer disaster management process that we go through that will take months or even a year to work its way through. So definitely a difference when it comes to emergency management and something that's slow, like an infectious disease versus something that's very rapid, like a power outage or an earthquake.

Host: Yeah. That totally makes sense. I'm sure there are going to be people listening to this who have absolutely no experience with disaster planning or even planning for something like this. Like something that is obviously more rare, but something we're living through right now. What advice might you have for where to begin?

Stephanie Meeks: Most importantly is educate yourself and your family. And with the resources we have available now, it's so easy to get out there and look at the many websites that are designed to help us get prepared. So my favorite is ready.gov. That's a great website. It has downloadable family communication plans and preparedness kit checklists, and even checklists for those who have people in your family that are disabled, or if you have pets, that sort of thing. Another American Red Cross is another great resource that you go to their website and they have a lot of checklists and kits and things like that for you to be able to have locally. We have already Kern. That one's a great one. You can actually receive alerts from Ready Kern that if there's something going on locally or in Kern County, so great place to get updates. Smart 911 is another one where you can actually put in your family information, how many people in your house, if they're on certain medications or if they have certain conditions that way when you do call 911, that actually pops up and first responders can get a head start on what they might be dealing with or what might be in your house. If it's on fire, that sort of thing. So educate yourself, find those resources and use them so that your family can be better ready to respond and react to those types of events and preparing for emergencies. It's never fun to go through those emergencies, but when you're better prepared, you're definitely going to be able to respond and handle those situations way more effectively than if you're not prepared.

Host: Absolutely Stephanie and I think that's the perfect place to end. Thank you so much for your time today. One of my favorite quotes is the price of peace is eternal vigilance, and that certainly applies here today. So some of the resources mentioned are ready.gov, the American Red Cross, Smart 911, and locally the Ready Kern website. That's Stephanie Meeks, emergency management and regulatory compliance manager at Ridgecrest Regional Hospital. Thanks for checking out this episode of the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital podcast and to learn more visit RRH.org/podcasts. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and be sure to check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. Thanks and we'll talk next time.