Southwest Lansing (MI) and my neighborhood

September’s task is to “Collect emergency information” according to the http://www.do1thing.us/ website. That’s timely.

Sam and I pulled up live GIS maps from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Association to look at Hurricane Ike’s path tonight.

I wanted to measure how far inland was expected to be impacted, and how that compared to our distance to the Great Lakes.

I wondered if there were people who had to be prepared for the effects of this enormous hurricane who don’t normally think of the gulf waters in their daily life.

It turns out the impact was expected to reach up to 120 miles inland in the lowest lying areas. We are about 80 miles away from Lake Michigan. I can’t imagine having to be prepared for distasters that would originate that far away.

Not that we’re going to have a hurricane on Lake Michigan or anything, but it made me think about we sometimes feel impervious to distasters on that large of a scale because they seem so far away.

But remember the summer of the east coast power outage? That was a reminder of how we are all connected together, especially on the energy grid.

We learned that cell phones were unreliable at that point.

And if that power outage had happened now, anyone with Comcast phone service would have been without a phone after their 8 hours of back-up energy sources were exhausted.

And now, 25% of our nation’s oil drilling and refining facilities are likely to be impacted by the Hurricane Ike so we’ll likely all feel the impact.

Remember Katrina? Neighborhoods were abandoned and folks were scattered all across the country in the mass evacuation, and of course some folks were left behind without the resources to leave.

-If we had a mass evacuation in Lansing, would you be able to contact your neighbors wherever they fled to and see if they were okay?

-Would you know if you had neighbors with special needs and couldn’t evacuate or needed special assistance?

-If you were out of town and something happened to your house, would a neighbor know how to reach you or someone who knows where you are?

It’s just a reminder that knowing your neighbors is really important. Not only does it help us create a strong social fabric to enrich our lives and to fight crime, it can also help to keep us “safe in the storm” so to speak.

While the weather is still nice, take a walk around your block. Get to know your neighbors. Exchange information as much as you feel comfortable.

Here is an example of information that neighborhood watch block captains and coordinators can collect to help plan for an emergency as well as crime watch: http://www.averillwoods.org/resources/FamilyDataSheet2008+-+revised+MH.doc

You can also get a detailed, but simple list of things to do and information to collect at http://www.do1thing.us/files/calendar/GettingEmergencyInformation.pdf

–Melissa