Do staff and visitors know how and when to evacuate the building or how and when to shelter-in-place? Have staff practiced evacuation and shelter-in-place plans? Do they know how to spontaneously solve problems when plans go awry? Have people with disabilities, emergency managers, and other stakeholders been involved in the planning? The Partnership can help you turn written plans into living documents and internalized skills that will protect the safety and could save lives.

The Partnership can help your business develop and conduct exercises to inform your disaster planning. The Partnership can help you develop exercises with stakeholders from the disability community and first responders, emergency management, public health, and at times law enforcement.

Types of exercises:

• Tabletop exercises: discussion-based exercises developed with disability community leaders and local emergency management experts where participants discuss evacuation and shelter-in-place strategies, and describe how they would be implemented in a variety of scenarios that include emergencies, disasters, public health emergencies that could occur alone or simultaneously.
• Operational / Functional exercises: a coordinated activity where participants respond to a simulated disaster or emergency. A variety of emergencies can be inserted into an operational exercise.

For more information or to set up a meeting, please contact directors@disasterstrategies.org.