Emergency Planning that Protects Lives of People with Disabilities

Obviously, emergencies impact citizens with and without disabilities. However, history has shown that people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by disasters because their needs are often overlooked or completely disregarded. Their evacuation, shelter, and recovery experiences have been appallingly more devastating than the experiences of people without disabilities. Too often, this population has been unable to evacuate because transportation was inaccessible. Further, people with visual and hearing disabilities could t obtain necessary information regarding imminent disaster and evacuation alerts pertinent to their safety because this communication did t comply with federal law. To ensure that individuals with disabilities do t experience these types of injustices during future catastrophes, emergency plans must be intentional and specific as they ackwledge and address the difficulties experienced by this population. In this presentation, participants will learn how to prepare an Emergency Evacuation Plan that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and protects the lives of people with disabilities in their community. Requirements for transportation, emergency shelters, emergency egress routes, and accommodations for service animals will be covered that will save the lives of residents, including individuals with mobility, visual, hearing, and cognitive impairments as well as for people whose survival requires medical equipment.
At the conclusion of this session participants will be better able to:
• Establish an Emergency Preparedness Community Network of local and state officials, medical and emergency response personnel, transportation authorities, and community members with disabilities.
• Plan for emergency evacuation, including accessible sheltering, emergency egress routes, areas of rescue assistance, accessible transportation, and accommodating service animals.
• Address a person with disabilities with politically correct language.