In case of disaster
Posted May 4, 2009
The recent events involving documented cases of a never-seen-before influenza virus, H1N1, has brought to the forefront some planning that the Village has been working on for the past several years. Several key people have been attending Pandemic Planning conferences on the county and state levels, gathering information on how to develop a pandemic plan and specifically how to put a plan in place for Opportunity Village.During this past year, we have developed a Disaster Planning Committee from this initial planning and also from what we learned during last summer's flood here on campus and from relocating clients from Mason City to the main campus. We decided to call it a disaster plan because there is no way we can anticipate exactly what kind of disaster we would be dealing with. Our goal is to develop planning that could be adapted to a wide variety of situations. Members of this committee include Primary Administrative Team (PAT), Health Services, Food Services, Technology, Maintenance, and off-campus staff.
To give you an idea of what has been done so far, food services has been working on building a supply of food and personal care items. Health services has been involved in ordering masks, gowns, gloves, and waterless hand gel and planning how to deal with infection control issues. Maintenance is working on water, structural, and electrical issues; PAT will deal with staffing issues; and technology is looking into mass communication to staff, guardians, volunteers, and case managers. This continues to be a work in progress, but all of us feel that our preparation so far has helped us already, because we have thought through various scenarios and how we would handle them.
We have all heard the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared! That is an excellent philosophy for us, also. We want to do our best to be prepared to meet the needs of our clients and staff in the event of a disaster situation.