Do you have insurance? Do you have a personal disaster plan?
Single mother Marjorie Jean-Baptiste’s home was in flames, the first floor impassable. One by one, she threw six of her seven children out of a second story window, relying on a snowbank to break their falls. Her oldest child bravely jumped.
All the children survived the ordeal with broken bones, burns, and other trauma that will most likely heal. I’m sure Ms. Jean-Babtiste’s heart will heal so much more slowly than her childrens’. I know that when the stairs in our not fixed up fixer-upper tried to kill my son in February, pitching him to the bottom for the second time in as many weeks and cutting his scalp (oh my, how those things bleed), it was a full four days before I could breathe without feeling the edges of a sob catch my throat.
Do you have renters’ insurance? Disaster insurance? Add up the value of all the belongings in your home. Add the value of your home, itself. And throw in the priceless memories, the photos, the binkies and blankies and stuff animals. Can you afford to lose all of that? Cost out the price of insurance, and get some. Too many families are one minor disaster away from the shelter. Call it peace of mind money.
My community is gathering clothes, furniture, and all the bits and sundries one loses to fire, for the families in a four-story apartment building that went up in flames. It’s all we can do to help, but it’s just not enough. We can’t give them back their keepsakes. We can’t take away the fear, the temporary homelessness, the feeling of helplessness they must all fight each night and morning.
Do you have a plan for an emergency? Do you know what you’ll do if there’s a tornado and your kids are at school, you’re at work, and your mother is at home? Where will you all meet? What will you do if cell phones don’t work? Do you know how your city is zoned for evacuation? Living where I do, it’s a comfort to me that I’ll be moving into the same zone as my son’s school, so it will be easy for us all to rendez-vous if something happens here in our nation’s capital.
Being a single parent, it’s harder to just run out to the store in the middle of the night if your child is sick. Keep the basics on hand, and check the expiration dates every three months or so. Make arrangements with friends or family — have someone you KNOW you can call in the middle of the night for help, no questions asked.
And have a plan to escape your home in the event of a fire. Ms. Jean-Baptiste tried to use a blanket as a ladder, but it was too short. Do you have one of those emergency ladders? Do your children know how to use it? Do they know how to check their doors before they open them?
I have one horrifying warning for you. A few months ago, I found out that a man I used to know was trapped inside his own house as it burned. He had bars on all his doors and windows, but could not find the keys to unlock one of the security doors. If you have deadbolts on your doors, the kind that doesn’t have a thumb latch, make sure the keys are nearby in plain sight. Consider having an ironsmith put in a lockable gate on window bars (our new place has a little door on the window bars in the bedrooms). The locks are protected with a long, metal sleeve that is easy to open from the inside, but impossible to jimmy from the outside.
Tags: disaster, emergency planning, escape, fire, Marjorie Jean-Baptiste, single-mom, single-motherRelated Stories
POSTED IN: PSA
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