6. SPECIAL NEEDS

Considerations during pandemic phases

People with special needs should include their particular requirements in their emergency and preparedness planning, including food and medication needs. It is important to recognize that the usual methods of support and assistance may be interrupted following disasters or during the onset of a pandemic disease.

Make a personal plan to help organize necessary information and activities during and after emergency conditions, and share your plan with your support network, including family, friends, your church, community organization, Department of Social Services, and the New Canaan Red Cross. Keep copies of your plan in your Disaster Supplies Kit, car, wallet, wheelchair pack, or at work, as appropriate for you.

Consider the following

If you are an individual with special needs including physical impairments, you already know day-to-day requirements necessary for you. Following disasters, storms, power outages, and other emergency conditions, you may experience a variety of disruptions, including those associated with having to relocate.

During a pandemic period, you may need extra provisions at home, as explained in other sections in this site, and you may have needs to relocate, perhaps to the home of a family member, or to a shelter, possibly for an indefinite period of time. You may not be able to take all that you need, so some advance planning will not only help you, but it will help others who will assist you.

What is appropriate for you?

• Identify safe places to go. Learn to stay at home, even under adverse conditions, but be ready to leave as necessary. Following disasters, New Canaan officials along with the Red Cross will establish shelters, in various locations, as needed.
• Make a floor plan of your home, including primary escape routes. (You may want your network to assist you with it.) On the floor plan, mark the rooms where you spend a lot of time. Also, mark where your disaster supplies kit is located. Give a copy of the floor plan to your network to help them find you and your supplies, if necessary.
• Prepare an departure plan beforehand. If you have to leave your home or workplace, you may need someone's help to travel safely. Practice using different ways out of a building, especially if you are above the first floor in a building with many stories. Remember, an elevator may not work or should not be used.
• Advocate for yourself. Practice how to quickly explain the best way to guide or move you and your adaptive equipment, safely and rapidly. Be ready to give brief, clear, and specific instructions and directions to rescue personnel, either orally or in writing, so they know to include wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, insulin, and other medications, for example.
• When needed, ask for an accommodation from disaster response personnel. For example, let a responder or relief worker know if you cannot wait in lines for long periods for items like water, food and disaster relief assistance.
• Keep a small disaster supplies kit in your automobile and maintain more than a half tank of fuel at all times. If you do not drive, talk with your network about how you will leave the area if the authorities advise an evacuation.
• Become familiar with the emergency or disaster/evacuation plan for your office, school or any other location where you spend a lot of time. If the current plan does not make arrangements for people with disabilities, make sure management at these sites know your needs.
• Have a care plan for your pet(s) and/or service animals if you have to leave your home. Pets will not be allowed into emergency shelters, so it is best to decide now where you will take your pet if you must leave. (See the section on Pets.) Service animals are allowed in hotels/motels and Red Cross shelters. However, these places cannot care for your animal. When you leave your home, remember to take a collar, harness, identification tags, vaccination records, medications and food for your service animal with you.