Pre-1:
- Adequate personal emergency planning with support systems will help people with disabilities (PWD) shelter at home or go to supportive environments rather than community shelters if possible rather than planning on Emergency Mnagement Agency (EMA) shelter and questionable services.
- Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) for basic and essential community based disability/health services is also well worth the EMA time so these services remain or return to functioning ASAP after a disaster. This allows PWD to shelter at home, provide services for shelter or elsewhere in the community.
Helpful Tips:
- Any EMA alerts or warnings to evacuate need to include "be sure to bring with you any medicine, medical supplies or adapted equipment you need". It has to be a short message, but this has been re-enforced with the EMAs that this is all specific to the individual and needs to come with them. At shelter or disaster registration be sure to clearly label all medicine, medical supplies and adapted equipment. Evacuation procedures need to also encourage and allow persons to bring medicine, medical supplies and adapted equipment (like wheelchairs, scooters, power chargers, transfer boards or benches/chairs, walkers, and augmentative communication devices). This might mean in the evacuation vehicle with the person or plan to have a follow-up vehicle to label and transport AT devices to same location as owner. Again, part of EMA transportation and evacuation is to plan ahead of time.
- It is also strongly encouraged that all general shelters have and pass an ADA access survey. Survey is attached to PDF below. If not accessible and still plan to use, then shelter may need AT on hand to quickly make accessible: raised toilet seat with grab bar, shower bench, TTY, portable ramp, accessible parking signs.
- The IOWA AT Program provided to each EMA the Pennsylvania TEMPLE UCEED picture communication board to laminate and have on hand.
- The FEMA guidance for Functional Needs Support Services (FNSS) (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/odic/fnss_guidance.pdf) has a long list of medical supplies and DME to have on hand. It's recommended that EMA have Memorandum's of Understanding (MOUs) with DME and CMS suppliers in increasing distances from county, so if a town is hit by a disaster DME in the next town or county could be brought over. Necessary to have ahead of time with large list of types of devices DME will have on hand to provide and plan to get into disaster area. As people sign into shelter or disaster services the specific type of AT can be identified and ordered. While the prelist is good for some things like CME for injuries, I doubt the FEMA list can accurately guess the specific CME and AT needs that will actually show up at a shelter.
- Then if they are going to have things on hand, practical in some cases:
- Use a washcloth to build up handles
- Paper and pen, chalk/board, etc for communication 1-1 and for posting announcements at same time as speaker/loud speaker.
- Flex straws
- Quick AT repair kit: duct tape, etc
- If they know shelter is not fully accessible, be ready to provide a shower bench, transfer board, Temporary signs for accessible parking,
- TTY if not available already in general shelters as identified in ADA survey
- ADA shelter cots (explain why more space is needed near a wall)
- Then also provide a cheat sheet or decision tree on how to replace AT/DME. If possible, provide them with info on how to start with funding sources and proceed for Medicaid, Medicare, VR, Education, Veterans. Also established Gov and Non-Gov disaster services that have funds to replace, then go to recycling programs. Plus provide how to match AT to user instead of one size fits all.
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